Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in India

This is the story of how Darjeeling tea began, was key to the largest tea industry on the globe under imperial British rule, and came to produce the highest-quality tea leaves anywhere in the world. It is a story rich in history, intrigue, and empire, full of adventurers and unlikely successes in culture, mythology and religions, ecology and terroir, all set with a backdrop of the looming Himalayas and drenching monsoons.

Everything that could possibly be wrong with a city was wrong with Calcutta. When Kushanava Choudhury arrived in New Jersey at the age of 12, he had already migrated halfway around the world four times. After graduating from Princeton, he moved back to the world which his immigrant parents had abandoned, to a city built between a river and a swamp, where the moisture-drenched air swarms with mosquitos after sundown.

The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors ,to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent, to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire.

The British East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire.

Karachi. Pakistan's largest city is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people. It is a place of political turbulence in which those who have power wield it with brutal and partisan force, a place in which it pays to have friends in the right places and to avoid making deadly enemies. It is a society where lavish wealth and absolute poverty live side by side, and where the lines between idealism and corruption can quickly blur.

With the engaging style of a true storyteller, Ghee Bowman reveals for the first time the astonishing story of the Indian contingent–the Muslim soldiers who fought in the pivotal Battle of Dunkirk–from their arrival in France on 26 December 1939 to their return to an India on the verge of Partition.

'Nobody has done more harm to me than Jawaharlal Nehru,' wrote Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939. Had relations between the two great nationalist leaders soured to the extent that Bose had begun to view Nehru as his enemy? But then, why did he name one of the regiments of the Indian National Army after Jawaharlal? And what prompted Nehru to weep when he heard of Bose's untimely death in 1945 and to recount soon after, 'I used to treat him as my younger brother'?

In this book, we explore British Colonialism in India, a history of oppression and exploitation, whilst celebrating the contributions that the diaspora and its descendants have made to British society. We explore the origins of the British East India Company, navigating through the dark history of a struggle for independence. On the way we meet Mahatma Gandhi, and recognize his significance in the fight for independence, before we discuss the partition of India and creation of Pakistan. We conclude with Indian emigration to the UK, and the history of the modern-day British Indian.

Asoka, who reigned from 268 to 232 BC, was the most famous emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, which was the ruling clan of the Indian subcontinent from 321 BC to 185 BC. He was one of the most famous early converts to Buddhism and became one of its greatest evangelists. Today Asoka has a twofold interest for us: political and religious. The illustrious member of the great dynasty, of which he was the most celebrated representative, has left indelible traces of its achievements in Indian history. Moreover, he was the leader of a spiritual movement that spread rapidly throughout the East.

When Bhagat Singh was executed by the British after a sham trial for his involvement in the Lahore Conspiracy Case at the age of 23, he was glorified by the Indians as a martyr for his youth, his defiance and his reckless bravery. It was only many years later, after Independence in 1947, that his writings came to light. Today, it is these that set Bhagat Singh apart and reveal him as not just a hot-headed revolutionary who believed in the cult of the bomb but a widely-read intellectual inspired by the writings of Marx and Lenin.

Designed for ardent history enthusiasts, India's Struggle for Independence is one of the most exhaustive and precise accounts of the struggle of Indian Independence ever written in the literary world. Written and edited by five expert authors, it presents a detailed outlook on one of the most important periods in Indian history.

The Nanda Devi Mystery: How India and America Lost a Nuclear Device is the thoroughly riveting and sometimes bizarre story of how India and America tried to install a nuclear-powered surveillance device on top of the Himalayas to snoop on China and then lost it forever.

The British invasion of Tibet in 1904 is one of the strangest events in British imperial history. Conceived by Lord Curzon as a strategic move in the Great Game - that colossal struggle between imperial Britain and Tsarist Russia for influence in Central Asia - the incursion was in fact ill-conceived and inspired by only the weakest of motivations.

Gandhi. The name conjures the image of a man, unimpressive in appearance, simple in his lifestyle, who spent his life pursuing independence for India. Months after the country achieved that independence from Great Britain, Gandhi’s life ended when an assassin killed him. But Gandhi’s legacy lives on. Gandhi’s rise to political and spiritual leadership is the incredible saga of a man who, in his youth, showed no signs of greatness but who became one of the most influential men of all time.

Known as the twice-born - first into the flesh and again when initiated into their vocation - the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity.

Forged during the tumultuous aftermath of Partition in 1947, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) has grown to become the preeminent intelligence service in Pakistan. Its capabilities are comprehensive, its remit covers both foreign and domestic intelligence, and it is one of the most feared and respected agencies of the Global South. Pakistan's ISI provides an up-to-date and detailed introduction to the ISI and its historical evolution.

The horse is etched on the Indian landscape, and to view the subcontinent’s past through the prism of the horse is to be swept up in its power and grace. Horses are a thread that connects Indian history, mythology, art, literature, folklore and popular belief. In this inspired and singularly erudite debut, Yashaswini Chandra takes us on the trail of the horse into and within India.

The spiritual journey of the Beatles is the story of an entire generation of visionaries in the sixties who transformed the world. The Inner Light illumines hidden meanings of the Beatles' India-influenced lyrics and sounds, decoded by Susan Shumsky—a rare insider who spent two decades in the ashrams and six years on the personal staff of the Beatles' mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

On a sweltering summer day in 2007, having just lost her brother to illness, Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself standing before a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess at a museum in Mumbai. What's written in the caption will change her life forever. This gorgeous Punjabi princess, it's said, sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where she died within a year. Could it be true? And if so, how could such a sensational story have gone unnoticed?

In the West, Hinduism is a religion that everyone has heard of but one that few non-practitioners truly understand. Today it is widely regarded as one of the world’s great religions and considered the indigenous religion of India, with practices and beliefs stretching back thousands of years. Sri Krishna, believed to be the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, is without question one of the most popular and instantly recognizable deities within the Hindu pantheon, which encompasses hundreds of Puranic divine beings.