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  • Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Guns, Germs, and Steel, published in 1997, starts from a question Jared Diamond says a New Guinean politician named Yali put to him: why did Europeans arrive with so much cargo while New Guineans had so little? Diamond sets out to explain why Eurasian societies, rather than those of the Americas, Africa or Australia, ended up conquering much of the world.

    His answer lies in environment rather than biology. Regions such as the Fertile Crescent happened to have wild plants and large animals suitable for domestication, which allowed food surpluses, dense populations, specialists, states and writing. Eurasia's east-west axis let crops and technology spread across similar climates, and living close to livestock bred diseases that later devastated peoples with no immunity, as in the Spanish conquest of the Incas.

    The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and became one of the most influential works of popular history. Historians and anthropologists have criticised it for environmental determinism and for underplaying human choices and colonial politics. Even so, it reframed how a generation of readers think about inequality between societies.

    Book details

    AuthorJared Diamond
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)480
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 1998

    Themes

    • Geographic determinism
    • Domestication of plants and animals
    • Epidemic disease
    • Conquest
    • Inequality between societies

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a bold, evidence-packed explanation of why world history unfolded so unequally.

  • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

    Published in 2018, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century completes a loose trilogy after Sapiens, about the past, and Homo Deus, about the future. Here Harari focuses on the present and asks how individuals and societies can make sense of a world changing faster than their institutions and stories.

    The book is grouped into five parts covering the technological challenge, the political challenge, despair and hope, truth, and resilience. Individual chapters consider job losses from automation, the concentration of data in few hands, the crisis of liberal democracy, nationalism and immigration, terrorism and war, religion, the problem of fake news and post-truth politics, the limits of our own knowledge and what education should prepare children for.

    It ends on a personal note, with Harari describing how Vipassana meditation helps him observe his own mind. Many essays began as articles and talks, so the book is more fragmented than its predecessors, but its clear framing of complex issues has made it popular with readers seeking a guide to contemporary debates.

    Book details

    AuthorYuval Noah Harari
    First published2018
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePhilosophy
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)370

    Themes

    • Automation and work
    • Post-truth politics
    • Liberalism in crisis
    • Education for the future
    • Meditation and self-knowledge

    Who should read it

    Readers looking for an accessible map of today's big debates on technology, politics and meaning.

  • Homo Deus

    Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow appeared in Hebrew in 2015 and in English in 2016. Harari begins by arguing that for the first time in history, famine, epidemic disease and large-scale war have become manageable problems for much of humanity, and he asks what goals will replace them. His answer is that elites will seek immortality, lasting happiness and godlike powers through biotechnology and computing.

    The middle of the book examines humanism, the belief system that places individual human feelings and choices at the centre of meaning, and its liberal, socialist and evolutionary variants. Harari then suggests that advances in life sciences and artificial intelligence may undermine humanism by showing that organisms are algorithms and that external systems can know us better than we know ourselves.

    He sketches an emerging creed he calls dataism, in which information flow itself becomes the supreme value. Harari presents these as possibilities rather than predictions, intended to widen debate. The book is speculative and often unsettling, and it pairs naturally with Sapiens as a thought experiment about where the story might go next.

    Book details

    AuthorYuval Noah Harari
    First published2015
    Original languageHebrew
    Translated byYuval Noah Harari
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)450

    Themes

    • Future of humanity
    • Artificial intelligence
    • Humanism
    • Dataism
    • Biotechnology and immortality

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoyed Sapiens and want a provocative look at how technology might reshape human values.

  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

    Sapiens, first published in Hebrew in 2011 and in English in 2014, attempts to tell the entire story of our species in one volume. Harari organises it around three turning points: a cognitive revolution about seventy thousand years ago, an agricultural revolution about twelve thousand years ago and a scientific revolution that began roughly five hundred years ago.

    His central argument is that humans came to dominate the planet because they can cooperate flexibly in huge numbers by believing in shared fictions such as gods, nations, money, laws and corporations. He provocatively describes farming as a trap that made most people's lives harder, examines how empires, religions and money unified humankind, and traces how science, capitalism and empire reinforced one another.

    Written in brisk, witty prose and full of arresting generalisations, the book became a global bestseller and a staple of popular nonfiction. Specialists have criticised some claims as oversimplified or speculative, but its scope and its willingness to ask whether humans have become happier have made it a starting point for countless discussions.

    Book details

    AuthorYuval Noah Harari
    First published2011
    Original languageHebrew
    Translated byYuval Noah Harari
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)440

    Themes

    • Shared myths
    • Agricultural revolution
    • Empire and money
    • Science and capitalism
    • Happiness

    Who should read it

    Curious readers who want a sweeping, provocative overview of human history in a single readable book.

  • City of Djinns

    City of Djinns, published in 1993, records a year that the young William Dalrymple spent living in Delhi with his wife, the artist Olivia Fraser. They rent rooms from the formidable Mrs Puri, a Punjabi refugee who rebuilt her family's fortunes after Partition, and ride around with a taxi driver, Balvinder Singh, whose opinions enliven many chapters.

    Dalrymple's method is to travel backwards in time. He talks to survivors of 1947 and of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, explores the remnants of British New Delhi and of the Mughal capital, visits Sufi shrines, eunuch communities and fading Anglo-Indian families, and finally searches for traces of the Delhi associated with the Mahabharata. The djinns of the title are the spirits believed to haunt the ruined city.

    Part travel book, part history and part comic memoir, it is full of affectionate portraits and eccentric encounters. It won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and established Dalrymple's reputation, and it remains one of the most popular introductions to the many cities layered within Delhi.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
    First published1993
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreTravel
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)340
    SettingDelhi, late 1980s, with excursions into its history
    AwardsThomas Cook Travel Book Award 1994

    Themes

    • Layers of history
    • Partition memory
    • Sufi and Mughal Delhi
    • Eccentric characters
    • Urban change

    Who should read it

    Travellers and armchair historians who want a witty, personal guide to Delhi's past and present.

  • The Anarchy

    The Anarchy, published in 2019, tells the story of the East India Company's transformation from a trading concern into a territorial power. It opens with the decline of Mughal authority after Aurangzeb, the devastating Persian raid on Delhi in 1739, and the scramble among regional powers that followed, an age of chaos that gives the book its title.

    Dalrymple follows a vivid cast: Robert Clive and the battle of Plassey, the Bengal famine of 1770, the young emperor Shah Alam struggling to keep his dynasty alive, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, the Maratha confederacy and Warren Hastings, whose impeachment trial in London exposed the Company's abuses. He shows how the Company used credit from Indian bankers, a modern army and local rivalries to extend its reach.

    A central argument is that this was conquest by a corporation answerable chiefly to shareholders, and Dalrymple draws pointed lessons about corporate power and its capture of governments. Drawing on Persian, Urdu and Company records, the book combines narrative drama with scholarship and became an international bestseller.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
    First published2019
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)520
    SettingBengal, Delhi, Mysore, the Maratha lands and London, 1756-1803

    Themes

    • Corporate power
    • Colonial conquest
    • Mughal decline
    • Plunder and famine
    • Imperial accountability

    Who should read it

    Readers curious about how a company came to rule a subcontinent, and what that says about corporations today.

  • The Last Mughal

    The Last Mughal, published in 2006, follows Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the elderly Mughal emperor whose authority barely extended beyond the walls of the Red Fort, and the Delhi he presided over: a city of poets, Sufi mystics, calligraphers and courtly ritual living uneasily alongside the growing power of the East India Company.

    When sepoys from Meerut rebelled in May 1857 and rode to Delhi, they made Zafar the reluctant figurehead of the uprising. Dalrymple uses Persian and Urdu documents from the National Archives, many never before used, to show the siege from inside the city: the chaos, the shortages, the quarrels among rebel commanders, and the views of ordinary residents. He also follows the British besiegers and their brutal retribution.

    The book argues that the uprising was also widely understood as a religious war, and that its suppression ended a composite Indo-Islamic culture in Delhi. Rich in detail and vividly written, it won the Duff Cooper Prize. It reads as both a gripping narrative and an elegy for the poet Ghalib's world.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)580
    SettingDelhi, mainly 1857
    AwardsDuff Cooper Prize

    Themes

    • 1857 uprising
    • End of the Mughal dynasty
    • Colonial violence
    • Delhi's composite culture
    • Religion and rebellion

    Who should read it

    History lovers who want an immersive, archive-rich account of 1857 seen from inside Delhi.

  • An Era of Darkness

    An Era of Darkness grew out of a 2015 Oxford Union debate in which Shashi Tharoor argued that Britain owes reparations to its former colonies. His speech went viral, and the book, published in India in 2016 and in Britain as Inglorious Empire in 2017, sets out the case in detail.

    Tharoor attacks the notion that British rule was a net benefit. He argues that India's share of world manufacturing collapsed as its textile industries were destroyed, that railways and administration were built primarily to serve British interests, that famines were worsened by policy, and that divide-and-rule politics hardened religious and caste divisions that culminated in Partition. Chapters also take on claims about democracy, the rule of law, the English language and tea and cricket as colonial legacies.

    The book is written with Tharoor's trademark eloquence and relish for argument, drawing on the work of earlier nationalist economists and modern historians. Critics note that it is advocacy rather than balanced scholarship, but it has been widely read as a rebuttal to imperial nostalgia. It won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019.

    Book details

    AuthorShashi Tharoor
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)330
    SettingIndia under the East India Company and the British Raj, 1757-1947
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 2019

    Themes

    • Colonial exploitation
    • Economic drain
    • Divide and rule
    • Imperial myths
    • Reparations

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a forceful, accessible counter-argument to the idea that the British Empire was good for India.

  • The City of Joy

    First published in French in 1985, The City of Joy is set in Anand Nagar, a crowded slum in Howrah across the river from Calcutta. Lapierre based his book on years of research and on real people, whose names and details he altered, and wrote it in a novelistic style that blurs reportage and fiction.

    Three main figures carry the narrative. Stephan Kovalski, a Polish Catholic priest, chooses to live among the slum's residents rather than minister to them from outside. Hasari Pal, a farmer driven from his Bengal village by drought and debt, becomes a rickshaw puller in the city. Max Loeb, a young American doctor, arrives to help run a clinic and confronts leprosy, cholera, monsoon floods and the slum's own mafia.

    The book was a worldwide bestseller and was filmed by Roland Joffe in 1992. Some Indian critics objected to its portrayal of Calcutta as a byword for misery, while admirers praised its insistence on the dignity, humour and solidarity of the poor. Lapierre donated a large share of his royalties to charitable work in the region.

    Book details

    AuthorDominique Lapierre
    First published1985
    Original languageFrench
    Translated byKathryn Spink
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)470
    SettingAnand Nagar slum, Howrah, near Calcutta, 1970s and early 1980s

    Themes

    • Poverty and resilience
    • Faith and service
    • Migration from countryside to city
    • Solidarity
    • Human dignity

    Who should read it

    Readers moved by stories of courage in hardship, with an awareness of the outsider's lens it brings to Calcutta.

  • Freedom at Midnight

    Freedom at Midnight, published in 1975, recounts the months from Lord Mountbatten's appointment as the last Viceroy of India in early 1947 to Gandhi's assassination in January 1948. The authors, an American and a French journalist, spent years interviewing surviving participants, including Mountbatten himself, and reading official papers, and they tell the story with the momentum of a thriller.

    The cast includes Mountbatten and Edwina, Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, Patel and the maharajas whose princely states had to be absorbed, as well as ordinary people caught in the upheaval. Set pieces include the drawing of the boundary line by a British lawyer who had never visited India, the midnight transfer of power, the massacres in Punjab, the vast refugee columns and the plot that ended in Gandhi's death.

    The book was an international bestseller and introduced many readers to the scale of Partition's violence. Historians have criticised it for its generous portrait of Mountbatten, its relatively harsh treatment of Jinnah and its fondness for anecdote over analysis. Read alongside more scholarly accounts, it remains a vivid and gripping entry point to the end of the Raj.

    Book details

    AuthorLarry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
    First published1975
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)570
    SettingBritish India, Pakistan and London, March 1947 to January 1948

    Themes

    • End of empire
    • Partition
    • Political negotiation
    • Communal violence
    • Gandhi's assassination

    Who should read it

    General readers who want a dramatic, page-turning account of 1947, ideally balanced with a scholarly history.