Didda, princess of Lohara, is beautiful, intelligent--and lame. Despised by her father and bullied by his heir, Didda's childhood is miserable and her future, bleak. When she is married off to the dissolute ruler of Kashmira, she must learn to hold her own in a court ridden with factions and conspiracies. But Didda is no ordinary queen. Ruthless and ambitious, she wants to rewrite history. Will she succeed? Queen of Ice is a compulsive read that brings alive the turbulent history of tenth-...

Tanjore, 1942 There are few excitements in Thambi's quiet life. There is the new hotel, disapproved of by elders, which lures him with the aroma of sambar with onions. There are visits to the library to read the newspaper, and once in a while, a new movie at the Rajaram Electric Theatre. More disagreeably, there are fortnightly visits from his uncle to lay down the law. When Gandhiji announces the Quit India movement, Tanjore is torn apart by protests. The train station-the lifeline of the...

The Kaveri is eternal; it will never let us down—and we Cholas live by this adage.’Kundavai is the daughter of the mighty Sundara Chola. She glories in the history of her dynasty and their victories in their perpetual battles for supremacy against the Cheras and Pandyas, and tries to understand the nature of power. She also constantly challenges herself—in ways discouraged by her mother, who wants her to embrace traditional feminine pursuits.When an assassi...

This book tells the stories of ten Indian monarchs who find, at best, passing mention in the history textbooks we read, though their lives were exciting and their achievements considerable: Ajatashatru | Bindusara | Rudradaman | Pulakeshin II | Jayapida | Didda | Ramapala | Abbakka | Chand Bibi | Ahilyabai Holkar Historian and award-winning novelist, Devika Rangachari writes absorbing tales of the men and women who shaped lives and kingdoms in their times.

Antagonistic Tolerance examines patterns of coexistence and conflict amongst members of different religious communities, using multidisciplinary research to analyze groups who have peacefully intermingled for generations, and who may have developed aspects of syncretism in their religious practices, and yet have turned violently on each other. Such communities define themselves as separate peoples, with different and often competing interests, yet their interaction is usually peac...

This book attempts to reintegrate women into the socio-political milieu of early medieval Orissa. Its sources are inscriptions, mostly Sanskrit, that date from the seventh century to the end of the reign of the Imperial Ganga ruler, Anantavarman Codagangadeva (CE 1078-1147). The evidence indicates that royal and non-royal women had varying but undeniably important roles to play in the socio-political fabric of this prominent regional entity. The Bhauma-Kara dynasty (c. mid-eighth/ninth-lat...

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the wor...

Iran has rarely been out of the headlines. Yet media interest and extensive coverage has tended to hinder rather than help our understanding of Iran as an idea, an identity, and a people, leading to a superficial understanding of what is a complex and nuanced political culture and civilization. This Very Short Introduction presents a radical reinterpretation of Iranian history and politics, placing the Islamic Revolution in the context of a century of political change and social t...

PRISON WRITINGS - THE ROOTS OF CIVILISATION Abdullah Ocalan was the most wanted man in Turkey for almost two decades until his kidnapping and arrest in Nairobi in 1999. He has been in Prison ever since. He is the founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). From 1984, under his leadership, the PKK fought for an independent Kurdish state in the Southeast of Turkey. In a sustained popular uprising, thousands of Kurdish fighters took on the Turkish army to protect their Kurdish identity, cul...

A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, focusing largely...

A sweeping work of history that the New Yorker says "demonstrates how history should be written"The Venture of Islam has been honored as a magisterial work of the mind since its publication in early 1975. In this three-volume study, illustrated with charts and maps, Hodgson traces and interprets the historical development of Islamic civilization from before the birth of Muhammad to the middle of the twentieth century. This work grew out of the famous cours...

'The natural sympathy and understanding of people everywhere must be the soil in which the new humanism can thrive.' For Daisaku Ikeda, whose words these are, education has long been one of the fundamental priorities of his work and teaching. And his emphasis on the intellectual legacy bequeathed to humanity by the great teachers of civilization is in this volume encapsulated by the notion of a 'new humanism': a significant residue of wisdom that in the right circumstances may be passed on...