In 1982, when Ullekh N.P. was still a young schoolboy in Kerala, he first came across Cuba and Fidel Castro in political discussions at home and on the streets. Kerala’s active communist movement and high literacy rates had made Castro a recognizable name in the state, and Cuba was idolized as a repository of ‘communist’ values.While growing up in the north Kerala district of Kannur—a bastion of Marxist politics—Ullekh delved into Cuba’s history, culture, literature and political l...

Kannur, a sleepy coastal district in the scenic south Indian state of Kerala, has metamorphosed into a hotbed of political bloodshed in the past few decades. Even as India heaves into the age of technology and economic growth, the town has been making it to the national news for horrific crimes and brutal murders with sickening regularity. What makes this region so susceptible to vendetta politics and such deadly violence? How is it an anomaly in Kerala, the state with the highest social d...

‘War Room stands out as an example of real field work and rigorous research… Anyone who wants to understand how decisions are made in India should read this brilliant study of the BJP.’—Dr. Walter K. Andersen, Author of The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism‘Ullekh NP has crafted a well-researched and gripping narrative of how the BJP seized the moment in 2014. Its penetrating analysis of the personalities, politics and methods of Mo...

Shashi Tharoor delivers an incisive biography of the great secularist who-alongside his spiritual father, Mahatma Gandhi-led the movement for India’s independence from British rule and ushered his newly independent country into the modern world. The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India’s first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Neh...

Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has kowtowed to it. But what do most Americans really know ab...

The "courageous and clarion" Booker Prize–winner "continues her analysis and documentation of the disastrous consequences of unchecked global capitalism" ( Booklist).From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India ...

'An ambitious, riveting and essential book that has much to teach us about the recent history of this region, and about the human impulse towards populism that continues to shape the world' Ben Rhodes, bestselling author of The World As It Is'A REVOLUTION IS A STRUGGLE TO THE DEATH BETWEEN THE FUTURE AND THE PAST.' FIDEL CASTROFor more than six decades, Fidel Castro's words have echoed through the politics of Latin America. His towe...

**Two decades of commentary by the New York Times–bestselling author: "An electrifying political essayist . . . uplifting . . . galvanizing." — BooklistFrom the Booker Prize-winning author of such works as The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, My Seditious Heart collects nonfiction spanning over twenty years and chronicles a battle for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile world. Taken ...

Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has curried favor with it. But what do most Americans really ...

“[A] sharply observed study . . . richly detailed portraits.”—EconomistSomini Sengupta emigrated from Calcutta to California as a young child in 1975. Returning thirty years later as the bureau chief for The New York Times, she found a vastly different country: one defined as much by aspiration and possibility—at least by the illusion of possibility—as it is by the structures of sex and caste. The End of Karma is an exploration of this ne...

An intimate conversation between towering public intellectuals examining the contentious interplay between the Cuban Revolution and U.S. empireAn audacious revolutionary experiment in the backyard of empire, Cuba has occupied a vexed role in the international order for decades. Though its doctors (and fighters)—and the outsized influence of its example—have traversed the globe, from Venezuela to Angola, its political and economic future remain uncertain as the Cast...

Mexico is a country in crisis. Capitalizing on weakened public institutions, widespread unemployment, a state of lawlessness and the strengthening of links between Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, narcotrafficking in the country has flourished during the post-1982 neoliberal era. In fact, it has become one of Mexico's biggest source of revenue, as well as its most violent, with over 12,000 drug-related executions in 2011 alone.In response, Mexican president Felipe Calderón, arme...