A Tide in the Affairs of Men are reminiscences of a senior administrative officer from his working in the secretariat in the central government and in the state of Madhya Pradesh to his varied experiences during other relevant postings. From handling students’ agitation in the Guna district of Madhya Pradesh in 1964 to his special posting in Bagladesh after the liberation of East Pakistan in 1971; and from his years in Manila as executive director in the ADB to working closely with Dr Manmohan Singh as revenue secretary, the narrative is a public servant’s journey that relooks at some of the important milestones with passion and candour.

Deepak Gupta did his BA from Allahabad, MA from St Stephen’s college and MPhil in International relations from JNU. From the IAS batch of 1974, he has spent many years in the field in the erstwhile state of Bihar, including two districts (Saharsa 1979–80; Rohtas 1986–88) as Collector. He served in many departments in state and center and was also posted in India Trade Centre, Brussels and spent a year as WHO Advisor on TB in Delhi. He retired in 2011 as Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. After retirement he consulted with the World Bank and UNIDO and writes on issues of energy and sustainable development. He was Chairman of UPSC from November 2014 to September 2016. His published works include Documentation of Participatory Irrigation Management, Covering a Billion with DOTS, Achieving Universal Energy Access in India: Challenges and Way Forward, and Caught by the Police.

The father of fibre optics, Narinder Singh Kapany was far more than your typical multi-hyphenate. Inventor, art collector, sculptor, farmer, entrepreneur, teacher, and a successful businessman, Dr Kapany was what Fortune magazine in its 1999 issue called, ‘one of the seven unsung heroes of the 20th century’. An insightful and inspirational life story, this memoir chronicles his ninety remarkable years. Charming, idiosyncratic, and highly engaging, The Man Who Bent Light serves up enough variety and verve to celebrate the lives of a half dozen individuals. But there is only one Narinder Singh Kapany, and his life, illuminated in his singular memoir, is a life like no other.

First published in 1885, Bazm-i Aakhir, or The Last Gathering is a rich and lively first-hand account of life in the royal court of the last Mughal emperor in Red Fort, Bahadur Shah Zafar. From meticulous details of the day-today happenings inside the fort-palace and the royal protocols, to the celebration of festivals such as Eid, Navroz, Diwali, and even Rakshabandhan, this gives us a glimpse into the Delhi of the early nineteenth century.

What was the intelligence failure that led to the hijacking of Indian Airlines’ flight IC-814 from Kathmandu on 24 December 1999? Could the aircraft have been stopped at Amritsar airport? Was a commando raid planned on the aircraft? How was Rupin Katyal killed? Was the plane’s destination always intended to be Kandahar? Was it merely prophetic that the hijackers had predicted the end of all negotiations on the millennium eve? These and other questions are answered in this blow-by-blow eyewitness account by Flt. Engineer Anil K. Jaggia, who breaks the silence around the hijacking with investigative journalist Saurabh Shukla of the Indian Express.

At a mere four hours’ notice, at 8.00 p.m., on March 24th 2020, the Indian Prime Minister Modi announced a lockdown to contain the spread of virus in order to jumpstart an already-crumbling healthcare system for one of the most devastating pandemics soon to envelop India. People stormed out to panic-buy ration stocks; India’s migrant working classes started walking back to the villages, left hungry and desolate without homes, work and wages - a scene not very short of an apocalypse. Over two summers, India woke up to similar headlines: a shortage of hospital beds, oxygen, medicines; a languishing economy; cases rising and falling; governments greenlighting Hindu religious, superspreader that compounded the second wave; misled unlocking schools, business and the social sphere, and reversed lockdowns when cases went up; underreporting of cases and deaths; lakhs dead to the virus and crores of people infected, and still counting. While the pandemic continues to rage on, notwithstanding its ebbs and flows, its real impact on society may start to be visible only much later. Over a year of tracking how the pandemic ravaged India’s society, economy, politics and culture, nine of finest India’s writers try and make sense of this difficult reality. The Dark Hour is a publisher’s anthology of specially commissioned long-form essays that unpack two dreadful summers of the pandemic that wreaked havoc on the many Indias within India.

Jyoti Jafa is an aristocrat by birth, a diplomat by training and a writer by inclination. She infuses her writing with her own joie de vivre and an artist’s sensitivity to ambience. She is also the author of Really, Your Highness! – a humorous look at the aristocracy of India.

A young British officer deserted during the First Afghan War (1839-42) and went to ground in the wilds of Tehri-Garhwal. Frederick 'Pahari'Wilson changed the face of the region forever and became a Himalayan legend. He played a daring role in the Great Game, was witness to the Anglo-Sikh War of 1845 - when the British nearly lost India - and became a pioneering force in the great Indian Railways adventure. Capturing the humour of the petty world of officers'clubs in Meerut, Mussoorie and Shimla, the chill of stiff winds on the high passes into Tibet, and the hardships of life in the remote valleys of Garhwal, The Raja of Harsil is a thrilling account of that tumultuous and exciting period. Driven by personal ambition, Frederick Wilson introduced commercial timbering to the Himalayas and became India's first timber magnate. An avid hunter, ornithologist and botanist, he settled at Harsil, near the source of the Ganges, and shared the lives and destinies of the Garhwali people. He acquired enormous wealth - becoming the richest man in northern India - and famous as the 'raja'of Harsil before falling into disfavour - termed a pariah for plundering Garhwal of its wildlife and natural resources.

Arjan Singh (1917–2010) in his activities has spanned both eras of Hunting and Conservation. From his farm, Tiger Haven, in Uttar Pradesh, where he stayed from 1959 to 2010, he extensively studied the varied wildlife of the area, and reared and successfully returned to the wild, a tigress and two leopards. A spokesman for the tiger, he waged many a crusade against environmental destruction. In recognition of his field work, he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal in the year 1976.

This intimate autobiography, rich in details of a society in transition, was written by one of India’s earliest women doctors. Though a child widow, driven from pillar to post, Haimabati nourished an ambition for higher education, eventually trained as a medical practitioner, and became the ‘Lady Doctor’ in charge of Hughli Dufferin Hospital for Women. Haimabati’s memoir illustrates the predicament of a woman determined to earn an honourable living in a man’s world. This extraordinary account, the longest and most detailed memoir yet discovered by an Indian woman born in the nineteenth century, was originally written in lined school notebooks in Haimabati’s native language, Bengali.