book extract Posts

“The Sensual Self: Explorations of Love, Sex & Romance” by Shobhaa De

06 12 , 2025 No Comments

In this provocative book, The Sensual Self: Explorations of Love, Sex & Romance, bestselling author Shobhaa Dé asks you to ditch the rulebook and ‘abandon good sense’ when it comes to owning your sensuality. It doesn’t matter if you’re twenty or seventy, sensuality has no expiry date. Whether you’re nursing a heartbreak or rejection, dissatisfied with sex in marriage, or are anxious about your waning libido—Dé has got you covered. From thrilling first dates and the aesthetics of a perfect kiss, to the messy world of casual coupling, group sex, kinks, and sexual red flags, Dé strips away the taboos and lays it all bare with her trademark wit and candour. Whether it’s heartbreak, rejection, jealousy, or fidelity, she dives into the chaotic terrain of human desire and sexual complexities. She asks men to roll up their sleeves and put in more effort, be experimental and non-judgemental, and demands that women stop settling for boring dal-chawal sex when life can offer spicy, finger-licking chicken chilli fry. Part manifesto, part guide, The Sensual Self is a fearless exploration of sensuality, love, and desire across every age and stage of life. Bold and unfiltered, The Sensual Self shows how you can embrace your (im)perfect curves, take charge of your sensuality, reclaim your desires, and live, love, and lust, on your own terms.

Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol. The book is published by Aleph Book Company.

Shobhaa Dé is a celebrated author, journalist, columnist, and social commentator. She has more than twenty bestselling books to her name. Her works have been extensively translated into a variety of languages, including French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.

“The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It” by Iain MacGregor

06 12 , 2025 No Comments

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945, the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world’s first atomic bomb. Built in the US by the top-secret Manhattan Project and delivered by a B-29 Superfortress, a revolutionary long-range bomber, the weapon destroyed large swaths of the city, instantly killing tens of thousands. The world would never be the same again.

The Hiroshima Men’s unique narrative recounts the decade-long journey towards this first atomic attack. It charts the race for nuclear technology before, and during the Second World War, as the allies fought the axis powers in Europe, North Africa, China, and across the vastness of the Pacific, and is seen through the experiences of several key characters: General Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project alongside Robert Oppenheimer; pioneering Army Air Force bomber pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets II; the mayor of Hiroshima, Senkichi Awaya, who would die alongside over eighty-thousand of his fellow citizens; and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Hersey, who travelled to post-war Japan to expose the devastation the bomb had inflicted upon the city, and in a historic New Yorker article, described in unflinching detail the dangers posed by its deadly after-effect, radiation poisoning.

This thrilling account takes the reader from the corridors of the White House to the laboratories and test sites of New Mexico; from the air war above Nazi Germany and the savage reconquest of the Pacific to the deadly firebombing air raids across the Japanese Home Islands. The Hiroshima Men also includes Japanese perspectives – a vital aspect often missing from Western narratives – to complete MacGregor’s nuanced, deeply human account of the bombing’s meaning and aftermath.

Fergal Keane, award-winning BBC foreign correspondent and author of Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 writes, “I can think of no more important book for our time. Written with moral clarity, tremendous verve, and the ability of a truly great historian to render the immensity of a moment through the smaller voices as well as being faithful to the facts. I recommend this magisterial, haunting book to all generations.”  

Giles Milton, author of The Stalin Affair adds further praise for the book saying, “The nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of the most iconic moments of the twentieth century. Yet little has been written about the individuals whose actions led to Japan’s unconditional surrender. Iain MacGregor’s The Hiroshima Men is epic in scale yet intimate in detail, its pages filled with mavericks and geniuses who forever changed our world. A meticulously researched and compellingly written tour-de-force.”

Read an extract from the book published on Moneycontrol.

Iain MacGregor has been an editor and publisher of nonfiction for thirty years working with esteemed historians such as Simon Schama, Michael Wood and James Barr. He is himself the author of the acclaimed oral history of Cold War Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Express, as well as the Spectator and BBC History magazines. As a history student he has visited East Germany, the Baltic and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s and has been captivated by modern history ever since. He has published books on every aspect of the Second World War. Iain is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives with his wife and two children in London.

“Economica: A global history of women, wealth and power” by Victoria Bateman

06 12 , 2025 No Comments

Economica: A global history of women, wealth and power by Dr. Victoria Bateman charts the course of women’s contribution to their national economy and acknowledges work done as being within and without the house too. Quite contrary to what Adam Smith believed that only paid work outside the home was construed as a contribution to the economy. Whereas Dr Bateman shows through empirical evidence marshalled from as far as the Stone Age to the present, the AI age, that women’s contribution, paid or unpaid was an essential part of the economy. Her book is packed with facts, anecdotes, histories, archaeological evidence, data sets etc. For instance, marriage contracts signed between the 11C and 15C included a clause wherein the woman could state she had the right to work after marriage. There are so many bits and pieces of information to share but the most enlightening was her use of the word “overlooked”. To use it constantly in the context of new evidence that confirmed the value of a woman’s work in the past is very empowering use of a simple word. It gives the reader the opportunity to reflect upon situations that they themselves may have been, where their evidence and work is overlooked whereas they are on the right path. It is new evidence so others cannot see it, recognise it, value it, or understand it. Developing faith in oneself and growing from there is what this book helps to achieve. It is not just a revisiting of inherited economic history narratives.

Humanity’s journey from poverty to prosperity is filled with men who have become household names. But how many female entrepreneurs, merchants and industrialists can you name?

Economica places women at the centre of the story of economic growth. Starting in the Stone Age and continuing to the present day, it takes the reader through the key economic milestones of the past twelve millennia — from the birth of farming to the advent of computing — all told through the experiences of women as well as men.

Historian Victoria Bateman weaves a thrilling, globe-spanning narrative that proves women weren’t ‘missing’ from economic life, they were merely hidden from view. We discover the female workers who helped to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, and to plumb the city of ancient Rome; the silk weavers who made a vital contribution to the development of the Silk Road and global trade; the women who dominated London’s brewing trade during medieval times; and the brave twentieth-century pioneers who fought to make our economies not just richer but fairer.

Dr Bateman is an economic historian, author and historical consultant. Her latest book, Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, is the first major economic history of the world to be told from the perspective of female wealth creators.

An extract from the book was published on Moneycontrol. My blog review of the book is here.

Economica was judged as one of the best books on Economics in 2025 by the Financial Times.

I also spoke to her for TOI Bookmark.

Victoria has twenty years of experience teaching macroeconomics and economic history at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, including as Director of Studies in Economics at Gonville and Caius College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is currently a visiting academic at Gresham College, London. Victoria has spoken extensively on radio and television, providing historical context for current events, including as resident economic historian for BBC Radio 4’s “Understand: the economy”. In addition to her writing and speaking, Victoria also works as a historical consultant for period dramas on TV and screen. Victoria is passionate about communicating economic history and believes in using our knowledge of the past to inform the present and to build a better future. 

Victoria has been profiled by The Times, has written for the Guardian, The Telegraph and Bloomberg, and has appeared on numerous occasions on the BBC and ITV. Her previous books include the acclaimed Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty (2023) and The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich (2019). In her spare time, you can find Victoria enjoying tea and cake after a walk in the countryside.

“The New Age of Sexism: How the AI revolution is reinventing misogyny” by Laura Bates

15 10 , 2025 No Comments

‘Laura Bates explains how they built the future – and forgot to put women in it’ CAITLINMORAN

‘Fascinating and essential… I urge you to read every syllable’ JO BRAND

‘All men must read this book if they have any interest in a truly just, fair and equal society’ ROBIN INCE

AI is here, bringing a seismic shift in the way our society operates. Might this mean a future reimagined on equitable terms for women and marginalised groups everywhere?

Not unless we fight for it. At present, power remains largely in the hands of a few rich, white men. New AI-driven technologies, with misogyny baked into their design, are putting women in danger, their rights and safety sacrificed at the altar of profitability and reckless speed.

In The New Age of Sexism, Sunday Times bestselling author and campaigner Laura Bates takes us deep into the heart of this rapidly evolving world. She explores the metaverse, confronts deepfake pornography, travels to cyber brothels, tests chatbots, and hears from schools in the grip of online sexual abuse, showing how our lives – from education to work, sex to entertainment – are being infiltrated by easily accessible technologies that are changing the way we live and love. What she finds is a wild west where existing forms of discrimination, inequality and harassment are being coded into the future we will all have little choice about living in – unless we seize this moment to demand change.

Gripping, courageous and eye-opening, The New Age of Sexism exposes a phenomenon we can’t afford to ignore any longer. Our future is on the line. We need to act now, before it is too late. ‘Urgent reading for anyone who is interested in the intersection of tech and gender equality, and indeed anyone who wants to be a part of building a better future, free from misogyny’ EMMA-LOUISE BOYNTON

‘A brilliantly researched, incredibly illuminating and frequently chilling account of the next chapter in tech’s ongoing assault on our core values. A chapter that is already unfolding around us all’ JAMES O’BRIEN

Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol. It is published by Simon & Schuster India.

Laura Bates studied English at Cambridge University and went on to be a freelance journalist. She has written for The Guardian, The Independent, The New Statesman, Red Magazine and Grazia among others. She is also contributor at Women Under Siege, a New-York based organisation working to combat the use of sexual violence as a tool of war in conflict zones worldwide. She is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project.

15 Oct 2025

Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography by Ruskin Bond ( An exclusive extract)

09 06 , 2017 No Comments

(Ravi Singh, Publishing Director and co-Founder, Speaking Tiger Books, sent this exclusive extract from Ruskin Bond’s autobiography Lone Fox Dancing. It is one of the publishing highlights of 2017 given the tremendous fan following Ruskin Bond commands. This autobiography at 100,000+ words is the longest book ever written by Ruskin Bond.) 


And here I must pause to tell you a little more about Ayah, my guardian angel, surrogate mother, friend and beloved all rolled into one and wrapped up in a white sari. My mother, young in years and younger at heart, was often away attending the lunch and tea get-togethers that the ladies of the royal household liked to organize, or she would accompany the younger royals on picnics and excursions. My father spent more time with me, but he would be at work through much of the day. I would be left in the care of the servants—all but the ayah provided by the Jamnagar State. I had no objection to the arrangement, because they indulged me. Most of all, Ayah.

She was probably from one of the fishing communities of Kathiawar or from the poorer Muslim families from the north of India who worked in Christian and Anglo-Indian households. She must have been in her thirties and was unusually large and broad-limbed for an Indian woman, and shaped like a papaya, expansive at the hips and thighs. I was told she had a family of her own but I never saw them, and she never spoke of them. She was the one I spent the most time with at home—she stayed all day, washing my clothes, giving me a bath and telling me stories in Hindustani about jinns and fairies and the snake transformed into a handsome prince by the loving touch of a beautiful princess.

Ayah had large, rough hands and I liked being soaped and scrubbed by her, enjoying the sensation of her hands moving over my back and tummy. She could also use those hands very effectively to deliver a few resounding slaps, because I really was a little devil. But her anger vanished as quickly as it came when she saw me break into tears. And then she would break down herself, and cover me with big, wet kisses and gather me into herself, pressing my face to her great warm breasts. To be hugged and kissed, and generally fussed over, is one of the joys of infancy and childhood. My mother was not a physically demonstrative person—the occasional peck on the cheek was enough emotion for her. But Ayah more than made up for it. She would kiss my navel and nuzzle my tummy and tell the other staff, ‘I want to eat him up! I want to eat him up!’

I was in love with Ayah—it was a child’s love for a mother, but it was also a sensual, physical love. I loved the smell of her skin and her paan-scented breath and her dazzling smile. She was in love with my soft white skin and bathed and dressed me with infinite tenderness, and defended me against everyone, including my parents.

If I swallowed an orange seed, Ayah would say an orange tree would grow inside me. Being an imaginative child, this rather worried me because orange trees, I was told, had thorns on them. I did not want to worry my parents unduly, so I took my problem to Mr Jenkins, who looked serious, thought about it for a few moments, then said: ‘Don’t worry, it will only be a small tree.’

Still worried, I consulted Osman, who laughed and said, ‘Your ayah is just a gapori, don’t listen to her.’

‘What’s a gapori?’ I asked.

‘One who makes up stories—and exaggerates. Go and tell her you’ve swallowed a bean.’

I did, and she said, ‘Oh, baba, now you’ll have a bean-stalk growing inside you!’

‘And there will be a giant living in it?’ I asked.

She burst into laughter, seeing I’d caught her out.

‘Osman says you’re a gapori,’ I told her. And she and Osman had a terrible fight. She chased him around the house and forgave him only when he said he meant she was a pari, a fairy, not a gapori.

Still, I think I learnt something about telling stories from Ayah, as I did from Osman, although I had no idea that I would become a gapori of sorts one day.

Ruskin Bond Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography Speaking Tiger Books, New Delhi, India, 2017. Rs 599; hardback; 288 pages + 32-page photo insert

9 June 2017

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