Tag Archives: Non Fiction

In My Hands Today…

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.

How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?

Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power … and our future.

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The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze & Back in Chinese Time – Simon Winchester

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Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, the Yangtze River, the symbolic heart of China pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea.

Connecting China’s heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters.

To travel those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China, and Simon Winchester takes us along with him as he encounters the essence of China–its history and politics, its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and its people in remote and almost inaccessible places.

In My Hands Today…

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Tamil Tigress – Niromi de Soyza

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Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades. With her was her lifelong friend, Ajanthi, also aged 17. Leaving behind them their shocked middle-class families, the teenagers had become part of the Tamil Tigers’ first female contingent.

Equipped with little more than a rifle and a cyanide capsule, Niromi’s group managed to survive on their wits in the jungle, facing not only the perils of war but starvation, illness, and growing internal tensions among the militant Tigers. And then events erupted in ways that she could no longer bear.

How was it that this well-educated, mixed-race, middle-class girl from a respectable family came to be fighting with the Tamil Tigers? Today she lives in Sydney with her husband and children, but Niromi de Soyza is not your ordinary woman and this is her compelling story.

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Neither East Nor West: One Woman’s Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran – Christiane Bird

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Fusing travelogue, historical inquiry, and interviews with Iranians from all walks of life, Neither East Nor West is a landmark contribution to travel writing and to cultural studies, as well as a timely illumination of a nation deeply misunderstood by most Westerners.

In describing life in Iran today, Christiane Bird, an American who spent part of her childhood there, breaks the silence that has surrounded Iran’s culture — unlike its politics — for nearly twenty years.

Travelling alone and largely by bus, Bird journeys from the modern, bustling capital of Tehran to the medieval holy city of Qom, from the sacred pilgrimage site of Mashhad — visited by more than twelve million Shi’ites annually — to the isolated valley of Alamut, once home to the legendary cult of the Assassins.

She visits mosques, public baths, Khomeini’s former home, and a Caspian Sea resort, and attends prayer meetings and a horse racing meet. Along the way, she talks to muleteers and ayatollahs, Kurds and Turkomans, Westernized and traditional Iranians — many of whom invited her home for a cup of tea.

The result is an astounding, insightful journey into the Islamic Republic of Iran — in all its beauty, ferocity, and contradiction.

In My Hands Today…

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I Too Had a Dream – Verghese Kurien

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The architect of ‘Operation Flood’, the largest dairy development programme in the world, Dr Verghese Kurien has enabled India to become the largest milk producer in the world.

A man with a rare vision, Dr Kurien has devoted a lifetime to realise his dream – empowering the farmers of India. He has engineered the milk cooperative movement in India. It was a sheer quirk of fate that landed him in Anand where a small group of farmers were forming a cooperative, Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’Union Limited (better known as Amul), to sell their milk.

Intrigued by the integrity and commitment of their leader, Tribhuvandas Patel, Dr Kurien joined them. Since then there has been no looking back. The ‘Anand pattern of cooperatives’were so successful that, at the request of the Government of India, he set up the National Dairy Development Board to replicate it across India. He also established the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation to market its products.

In these memoirs, Dr Verghese Kurien, popularly known as the ‘father of the white revolution’, recounts, with customary candour, the story of his life and how he shaped the dairy industry. Profoundly inspiring, these memoirs help up to comprehend the magnitude of his contributions and his multifaceted personality.