Tag Archives: History

In My Hands Today…

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Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family – Daniel Finkelstein

Daniel Finkelstein’s grandfather Alfred Wiener was a German Jewish intellectual leader who tolled an early warning of the impending Holocaust and became anarchivist of Nazi crimes.

He relocated his family to safety in Amsterdam, where they became close with Anne Frank’s family. But they were eventually separated, and Daniel’s mother Mirjam was sent to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and sisters while Alfred worked feverishly to free them. Finkelstein’s father, Ludwik, grew up in a prosperous Jewish family in Poland where his father was a patriotic hero of the Great War.

But when Stalin took control, Finkelstein’s grandfather was deported to Siberia, while Ludwik and his mother were sent to face freezing winters and harrowing forced labourm conditions in Kazahkstan.

Love and Murder is a page-turning account of ingenuity, bravery and the incredible coincidences that brought Daniel’s parents together as refugees in Britain. The story features secret archives, forgery and theft, and sweeps across Europe to show the expanse of the war. Moving, engrossing and inspiring, Love and Murder will profoundly touch all who read.

In My Hands Today…

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Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding – Husain Haqqani

The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension and always has been. Pakistan—to American eyes—has gone from being a quirky irrelevance to a stabilizing friend, an essential military ally, and a seedbed of terror. America—to Pakistani eyes—has been a guarantee of security, a coldly distant scold, an enthusiastic military enabler, and is now a threat to national security and a source of humiliation.

The countries are not merely at odds. Each believes it can play the other—with sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, results. The conventional narrative about the war in Afghanistan, for instance, has revolved around the Soviet invasion in 1979. But President Jimmy Carter signed the first authorization to help the Pakistani-backed mujahedeen covertly on July 3—almost six months before the Soviets invaded. Americans were told, and like to believe, that what followed was Charlie Wilson’s war of Afghani liberation, with which they remain embroiled to this day. It was not. It was General Zia-ul-Haq’s vicious regional power play.

Husain Haqqani has a unique insight into Pakistan, his homeland, and America, where he was ambassador and is now a professor at Boston University. His life has mapped the relationship of the two countries, and he has found himself often close to the heart of it, sometimes in very confrontational circumstances. This has allowed him to write the story of a misbegotten diplomatic love affair, here memorably laid bare.

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The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge – Matt Ridley

The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or morality. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Patterns emerge, trends evolve. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, and termites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching and morality changes without a plan.

Although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land can be released for nature—these were largely emergent phenomena, as were the Internet, the mobile phone revolution, and the rise of Asia. Ridley demolishes the arguments for design and effectively makes the case for evolution in the universe, morality, genes, the economy, culture, technology, the mind, personality, population, education, history, government, God, money, and the future.

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Ambedkar’s India – B.R. Ambedkar

Ambedkar’s India is a collection of three of B.R. Ambedkar’s most prominent speeches on caste and the Indian Constitution.

“In the fight for Swaraj, you fight with the whole nation on your side. In fighting caste system, you stand against the whole nation—and that too, your own.”

Annihilation of Caste is one of Ambedkar’s best works in putting together how caste as a system has been eating up the roots of a rich cultural melting pot like India. “Bhakti in religion could lead to salvation. But in politics, Bhakti is a sure road to eventual dictatorship.”

The Grammar of Anarchy reflects Ambedkar’s ideas on how we need to pave the way for Independent India. It reflects his deep love and aspirations for India and its people. “…the sub-divisions [of caste] have lost the open-door character of the class system, and have become self-enclosed units called castes.”

Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development is an in-depth study of how classes went on to become castes and sub-castes to dot the Indian social system. This powerful narrative is a radical eye-opener.

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A Little History of Economics – Niall Kishtainy

What causes poverty? Are economic crises inevitable under capitalism? Is government intervention in an economy a helpful approach or a disastrous idea? The answers to such basic economic questions matter to everyone, yet the unfamiliar jargon and math of economics can seem daunting. This clear, accessible, and even humorous book is ideal for young readers new to economics and for all readers who seek a better understanding of the full sweep of economic history and ideas.

Economic historian Niall Kishtainy organizes short, chronological chapters that center on big ideas and events. He recounts the contributions of key thinkers including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and others, while examining topics ranging from the invention of money and the rise of agrarianism to the Great Depression, entrepreneurship, environmental destruction, inequality, and behavioral economics. The result is a uniquely enjoyable volume that succeeds in illuminating the economic ideas and forces that shape our world.