The Land Trap
Mike Bird
Hachette
Pp 336, Rs 799
The Economist’s Wall Street editor Mike Bird reveals a sweeping, global history that shows how fortunes have been built—or destroyed—all on the bedrock of land. It has become the linchpin of the world’s banking system and it affects everything from soaring housing prices to geopolitical tensions. From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China’s modern-day real estate crisis, this gripping narrative shows how the economics of land can make and break families, businesses, and even entire nations.
The Social Life of Indian Trains
Amitava Kumar
Aleph Book Company
Pp 152, Rs 399
To explore just how trains in India have seeped into the national psyche, and to explore the gigantic enterprise that is Indian Railways, writer Amitava Kumar took several journeys on some of the country’s celebrated trains, from the Himsagar Express, which traverses one of the world’s longest rail routes from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, to the legendary Darjeeling mountain railway that has been praised in movies, literature, and songs.
Speed: How It Explains the World
Vaclav Smil
Penguin Random House
Pp 352, Rs 1,099
In Speed, Vaclav Smil reveals the surprising truth: the world is not simply getting faster; it has always been governed by competing tempos, some unimaginably slow, others unimaginably fast. Blending science, data and storytelling, Smil decodes the scales of motion that shape everything, from the migration of birds and the pace of ecosystems to transportation networks, industrial systems and the limits of human innovation.
Why I Killed My Husband and Other Such Stories
Anita Nair
Westland Books
Pp 280, Rs 599
A landowner contemptuous of political activism finds it taking root in his own home. A couple’s holiday takes a surprising turn when they initiate a role-playing game. In a traditional akhara in northern India, caste drives the plot as much as the characters’ will… Each of the six stories in the volume captures the interplay between the personal and the political while exploring the everyday existence of Indians across different social strata.
THE DIG
Sowmiya Ashok
Hachette
Pp 320, Rs 799
Since its discovery in 2014, the Keeladi excavation has become one of India’s most contested digs—hailed by some as proof of an urban civilisation and dismissed by others as political mythmaking. Sowmiya Ashok traces the serendipitous discovery of this ancient settlement and the political storm it set off. Her journey takes her from the Iron Age sites in Tamil Nadu to the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi in Haryana and the lost port of Muziris in Kerala.
