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  Sakuntala Narasimhan: Rakshasi...

  Ranjan Kamath

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  Sakuntala Narasimhan, born in 1939 and living in Delhi during 1947 when India became independent is an Indian journalist, consumer rights activist, and classical vocalist trained in Carnatic and Hindustani classical music. She has as many as 3,950 published pieces, all neatly stored in box files – a stupendous number of articles for a trained musician who gave her first public performance at the age of three and her first broadcast at 10. After marriage, Sakuntala took up the challenge of running a house. Having never had much to do with domesticity, her first forays into the kitchen were a disaster, from charred beans to watery okra. With a premature baby to deal with, her plans to do her PhD in Economics could not materialize. With no money for paper, she began writing on the back of used envelopes. In July 1966, her story ‘The Beauty Contest’ was published in Femina and she was paid the princely sum of Rs 30. She went on to get published in The Hindu a month later, a confidence booster which allowed her to think she had a career in writing. ‘Their Myriad Ways’, published in Femina in 1967, went on to win a prize – an occasion that she says caused her to jump four feet in the air. And then, there was no looking back. As a columnist Sakuntala won many awards, including the Chameli Devi Award for an Outstanding Woman Journalist. Environment and consumer issues were also her forte, and besides her columns on gender and consumer rights, for the Deccan Herald for 27 years, she went on to become a consumer rights activist, filing cases, and winning most of them. She currently writes for The Wire, Citizen Matters, and Moneylife. Alongside her writing, Sakuntala also taught Economics, Music and Women’s Studies. Besides being a prolific writer, Sakuntala pursued her academic interests and in 1996, she got her first PhD in Sociology. And not one to rest on her laurels, she got another PhD in music, fulfilling her self-pledge to "get my doctorate before I die."

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  Parallel Lives of the Noble...

  Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus

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  Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving lives contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. 
  Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of lives the Epaminondas-Scipio Africanus no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers. 
  His Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar. 
  In this copy-right expired 11-volume translation from the Loeb Classical library, the order of the paired lives is rearranged to present the Greek lives in chronological order.  Vol 3 presents the paired lives of Pericles and Fabius Maximus and Nicias and Crassus. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline.)

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  These Strange Ashes - A Deeply...

  Elisabeth Elliot

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  In this deeply personal account of her first year as a missionary, Elisabeth Elliot shares what it was like to work in the jungles of Ecuador with a small group of women, bringing the Word of God to the indigenous tribe that martyred her husband. With fascinating detail, she captures the stark realities of life among these complex people and reflects upon the "strange ashes" that can result when an act of obedience is passed through the fires of God's perfect--yet mysterious--will. 
   
  These Strange Ashes is more than a remarkable sharing of a year in the life of a Christian missionary; it is a reflection on the great questions of life and a memorable testimony to the realities of authentic Christian commitment. First published nearly 40 years ago, this classic is sure to inspire a new generation to find and follow God's will--wherever it leads them.

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  Mrs Shelley

  Lucy Madox Rossetti

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  "I have to thank all the previous students of Shelley as poet and man--not last nor least among whom is my husband--for their loving and truthful research on all the subjects surrounding the life of Mrs.Shelley." -Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti Mrs. Shelley is a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, author of Frankenstein and other works, wife of Percy Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who penned The Vindication of the Rights of Women, and daughter of William Godwin, a philosopher and novelist. The life of this woman, who at nineteen wrote a story that has become a part of everyday culture, is its own story to tell. The author Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti was the daughter of the artist Ford Madox Brown and the wife of William Michael Rossetti of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (Summary by A.L. Gramour)

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  No Return Ticket: Leg One - Leg One

  Skip Rowland

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  Tired of California's glitzy lifestyle, greed and urban sprawl, Captain Skip Rowland sells everything to drift and blend in the drop dead beauty of the South Pacific. But before casting-off his yacht is stolen and set ablaze on a desolate Mexican shore. (A story bin itself) Skip, recently in the USMC captures the thieves, sailing later in a new yacht with his son and nurse girlfriend. They accidentally sail unto an active military coup de tat, are chased by a vagabond freighter, make love on picture perfect uninhabited islands and cross the Tasman Sea to Australia in the worst weather in 100 years.Told in an authentic sea captains voice you will believe you are on deck experiencing every moment of this true adventure

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  The Gunzburgs - A Family Biography

  Lorraine de Meaux

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  In 1857 the Gunzburgs arrived in Paris from Russia with their large family, a retinue of business staff and extensive domestic help: personal assistants, secretaries, tutors, wet-nurses and nannies, coachmen, ladies' companions, valets and maids, and even a kosher cook.
  For the Gunzburgs were practising Jews who observed every religious law whilst also launching themselves into Parisian high society. Napoleon III was on a mission to modernise France and the Gunzburgs were quick to avail themselves of opportunities that were opening up – particularly in banking. The family fortunes prospered through hard work, foresight and marriage. Soon the family was playing a leading role in the Jewish communities of both Russia and France, alongside their contemporaries and relatives: the Ephrussis, the Rothschilds, the Brodskys, the Camondos and the Sassoons.
  The family lived through the tumultuous events of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and, when personal tragedy struck, they returned their base back to Russia. There they worked tirelessly to develop their business interests and to improve the living conditions of Jews, but setbacks abounded: the advent of Alexander III, pogroms and the revolutions of 1905 and later of 1917. The outbreak of the First and Second World Wars saw some of the family once again on the road as refugees, while others fought in the Allied armies and in the Resistance in France.  In this lively and far-ranging family biography, Lorraine de Meaux discovers lost archives, letters, documents and paintings in her quest to piece together the little-known story of the Gunzburgs.

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