Rarely can a single volume fundamentally change one’s view of a major part of the planet and its complex history, but this epic account of the hundreds of states and thousands of colorful leaders who have figured in 5,000 years of turmoil and achievement on the Indian subcontinent is that invaluable exception. Not one educated, concerned, intelligent American reader in 10,000 knows a tenth of the information packed into this zesty history. That’s a safe bet, and so is this: Despite the very occasional thin passage, when the historical record is bare or a succession of patricidal nawabs becomes repetitive, John Keay grabs the reader by the throat on virtually every page with another vivid portrait of an unforgettable warrior or thinker, luminous evocation of art or bejeweled pageantry, or charge of elephant troops across a blasted plain.
In short, India: A History is seductive storytelling that reveals unexpected worlds of information, beginning with fairly recent discoveries about the Harappans, who may have invented writing and the wheel well before any other culture, and continuing through a myriad of Hindu, Greek, Mongol, Moslem, and other rulers through the British Raj down to the creaky but functioning federalism of today’s Indian Republic. Taking his story from Himalayas to Indian Ocean, as cultures rise and fall or destroy one another all over the subcontinent, Keay brilliantly renders tangled history into lucid narrative. Still, the 39 maps keyed to his story will be of great benefit to any reader.
Perhaps India: A History is most surprising in its introduction to Western readers of numerous personalities who clearly bestrode their times like colossi, such as the great lawgiver Ashoka of the third century or the admirable sultan Ala-ud-din a thousand years later.
Throughout his lengthy but never overlong story, Keay also illuminates religious differences, political movements and the eternal push-pull between Indian nationalism and regional aspirations. India: A History is a novelistic saga that provides Westerners with millennia of new experiences.
Charles Flowers, who lives in Purdys, New York, is writing a book about the fall of the Aztec empire.
Rarely can a single volume fundamentally change one's view of a major part of the planet and its complex history, but this epic account of the hundreds of states and thousands of colorful leaders who have figured in 5,000 years of turmoil and achievement on…
Three decades after his first book was published in England, James Herriot’s charming tales of life as a country vet in Yorkshire continue to delight readers. His nine original books have inspired television shows, children’s books, and special collections. All told, his works have sold more than 60 million copies and been translated into 20 languages. As his son observes in this heartfelt, affectionate memoir, Herriot wrote with such warmth, humour, and sincerity that he was regarded as a friend by all who read him. Wight assures readers that his father was every bit the gentleman they thought him to be, a self-described run of the mill vet who remained completely modest, even during the height of his success. The author recalls one evening when he and his father were having drinks with two farming friends. Although Herriot had been to Buckingham Palace the day before, he never once mentioned his audience with the queen.
James Herriot was a pseudonym used by James Alfred Wight, who graduated from Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939 and soon began his practice in the farming town of Thirsk (better known to readers as Darrowby). He would remain there for some 50 years, immortalizing a bygone era of veterinary medicine that he described as harder, but more fun. First as a small but very proud assistant, and later as a colleague in his father’s practice, Wight met many of the characters evoked so beautifully in Herriot’s books. Wight describes these real-life personalities fondly, with a flair that recalls his father’s remarkable storytelling abilities. Readers will delight in Wight’s portrayal of the mercurial, charming, impossible Donald Sinclair, aka Siegfried Farnon, whose advice to him included such aphorisms as Paint a black picture! If you say a case is going to recover, you could be in trouble if it doesn’t. As research for this memoir, Wight reread all his father’s books, looking for writing tips. Instead, he found himself being drawn into the stories. I always end up in the same state the book on the floor and my head back, crying with laughter, he says. What better tribute could his father have asked for? Beth Duris works for the Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia.
Three decades after his first book was published in England, James Herriot's charming tales of life as a country vet in Yorkshire continue to delight readers. His nine original books have inspired television shows, children's books, and special collections. All told, his works have sold…
Three decades after his first book was published in England, James Herriot’s charming tales of life as a country vet in Yorkshire continue to delight readers. His nine original books have inspired television shows, children’s books, and special collections. All told, his works have sold more than 60 million copies and been translated into 20 languages. As his son observes in this heartfelt, affectionate memoir, Herriot wrote with such warmth, humour, and sincerity that he was regarded as a friend by all who read him. Wight assures readers that his father was every bit the gentleman they thought him to be, a self-described run of the mill vet who remained completely modest, even during the height of his success. The author recalls one evening when he and his father were having drinks with two farming friends. Although Herriot had been to Buckingham Palace the day before, he never once mentioned his audience with the queen.
James Herriot was a pseudonym used by James Alfred Wight, who graduated from Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939 and soon began his practice in the farming town of Thirsk (better known to readers as Darrowby). He would remain there for some 50 years, immortalizing a bygone era of veterinary medicine that he described as harder, but more fun. First as a small but very proud assistant, and later as a colleague in his father’s practice, Wight met many of the characters evoked so beautifully in Herriot’s books. Wight describes these real-life personalities fondly, with a flair that recalls his father’s remarkable storytelling abilities. Readers will delight in Wight’s portrayal of the mercurial, charming, impossible Donald Sinclair, aka Siegfried Farnon, whose advice to him included such aphorisms as Paint a black picture! If you say a case is going to recover, you could be in trouble if it doesn’t. As research for this memoir, Wight reread all his father’s books, looking for writing tips. Instead, he found himself being drawn into the stories. I always end up in the same state the book on the floor and my head back, crying with laughter, he says. What better tribute could his father have asked for? Beth Duris works for the Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia.
Three decades after his first book was published in England, James Herriot's charming tales of life as a country vet in Yorkshire continue to delight readers. His nine original books have inspired television shows, children's books, and special collections. All told, his works have sold…
In Edible Plants, Jimmy W. Fike takes native North American plant specimens—such as dandelion, rocket, sassafras, spicebush and pawpaw—out of their natural surroundings and meticulously digitally photographs them against black backdrops. In each image, the stark contrast makes visible the magical potency and potential of these common living things, many of which are often dismissed as weeds. Fike colorizes the edible portions of each plant, while the inedible parts are kept a delicate, even eerie gray. These striking photographs seek to inform, similar to the horticultural photography and illustrations of eras past, perhaps making foragers of us all. But what’s more, they are painstakingly beautiful. This book would make an impressive gift for the naturalist in your life.
Cats & Books
How can we not give a shoutout to Cats & Books, a slim-and-trim, adorable celebration of felines sprawled amid TBR piles and perched on bookshelves? This is a hashtag-to-print project: The photos are crowdsourced from Instagram users worldwide who tagged their photos #CatsandBooks. Now compiled in print, short captions give glimpses of these kitties’ personalities. For example, George from Germany “is a gentle soul and the best office buddy one could ask for.” (Sweet George is shown with a paw flung possessively over a copy of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.) Any person who loves cats and also loves books obviously needs to own this small treasure.
Things You Can Do
Last night at dinner, my daughter complained about the absence of meat in her tacos, which led to a discussion of sustainable eating. She didn’t grasp the connection between a carnivorous diet and climate change, so I brought to the table Things You Can Do and read from Chapter 3, “A Climate-Friendly Diet.” I daresay I got through to her, and I imagine New York Times journalist Eduardo Garcia’s compact, well-sourced guide to fighting climate change and reducing waste will continue to help us play our small but mighty part. Grounded in science, this approachable book offers a 360-degree view of the causes and effects of a warming planet, from reliance on coal to the excesses of modern life, including the overuse of air conditioning, increased meat consumption, car culture and much more. I for one am glad to have this resource, rounded out by beautiful watercolor and gouache illustrations by Sara Boccaccini Meadows, at my fingertips for family meals and beyond.
The natural world and all of its delicate delights take center stage in this month’s roundup of the best and most beautiful lifestyles books.
Tabitha Carvan’s This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something—Anything—Like Your Life Depends on It is very funny. She introduces herself by telling readers, “I am writing this from inside Benedict Cumberbatch.” (But don’t worry; she means a sweatshirt with his face on it, not a skin suit.) When describing the book, she quips, “What’s something that this book has that Benedict Cumberbatch does not? That’s right! An appendix.” From start to finish, the author is impressively informed and hilariously enthusiastic about the English movie and TV star.
But as she shares in a delightful phone call to her home in Canberra, Australia, Carvan wasn’t always so upfront about her infatuation with the man whose fans call themselves “Cumberbitches.” (See also: Cumbercookies, Cumbercommunity and Benaddicts.) Rather, she viewed her sudden surge of interest in him as an alarming signal that something was wrong with her.
Carvan, a mom of two, says her fascination with the actor sparked several years ago, at a time when she was “completely strung out by motherhood—that sense of having just nothing left in me.” She’d recently moved from Vietnam, where she had a flourishing career, back to Australia with her husband. “Here I was, alone at home in a new small town with no job,” she says. “The extent of the feelings I had at that time were tiredness and busyness. I think there was just a part of my soul that needed to be filled up with something that allowed me to feel alive—allowed me to feel anything.”
When a newspaper ad for the BBC television show “Sherlock” caught her eye, Carvan experienced an unexpected yearning. She began to watch that show, and then other shows and movies and interviews featuring Cumberbatch, until she was fully hooked. But it wasn’t just his “eyes that are too far apart . . . and yet somehow also perfect,” as she puts it in her book, or even his “Cumberbottom” that enchanted her; it was the giddiness she felt when she watched him, the smile that spread across her face when she thought about him.
Carvan says that, as her desire revved up, so did her curiosity. After all, it’s one thing to appreciate an actor’s art and skill and another thing for that appreciation to kick off—for millions of people—what she viewed as a swoony regression. So the science writer put her investigatory chops to work, determined to figure out, “Why was this happening to us? Why Benedict Cumberbatch? Why did it happen at that particular time?”
The author dove into books like Brigid Schulte’s Overwhelmed, about the components of modern life that eat away at our leisure time, and Ethel S. Person’s By Force of Fantasy, about the value of having fantasies. She also interviewed numerous fellow Cumberbatch fans, who spoke openly about the whats and whys of their devotion. For example, there’s Kyndall, a high-powered executive who makes digital paintings of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in lingerie; a professor named Emma who writes copious fan fiction; and Lea, a nail salon owner in Ohio who adorns the shop’s walls with photos of the actor and chats about her Cumberlove with clients.
“When something brings people so much joy, why can’t we just let it?”
Carvan says their conversations “were affecting me hugely in the way I saw myself.” And over time, she says, “I began to realize that [the fandom] was not the most interesting thing that was happening to us. The most interesting thing was that we were all so happy.”
But that happiness was clouded by self-consciousness. “So many of them would be like, ‘Don’t tell anyone about it, don’t share it, I don’t want anyone to know,’” Carvan says. “And so that became the real question of the book: When something brings people so much joy, why can’t we just let it? Why can’t we just be open to feeling that?”
The author, who is the youngest of four children, says some of her own hesitancy began in childhood. “I think my parents and siblings contributed to my idea of ‘smart people,’” she says—including the idea that smart people “don’t care about trivial feelings. . . . We focus on the things that really matter, which is being clever and being academically good.”
Then there are the societal norms around infatuation. If a man blankets his home in sports or Star Wars memorabilia, for example, it’s acceptable, even cool. But if a woman does something similar, it’s odd or inappropriate, especially if she’s a mother. As Carvan writes in her book, “Women mature out of their pleasures. Men, on the other hand, get to hang on to theirs, turning them into a lifelong passion, or even better, a career.”
“If it was in you once, the ability to lose yourself in something purely fun, I assure you the ability is still in there somewhere.”
Living in a culture that worships the hustle can make people “feel like our free time has to be used to do everything, to make us fitter, look better, tick boxes for being good citizens,” Carvan says. Through writing her book, however, she’s learned that finding “a way to have completely pointless fun in your life seems to be quite a transformative step—a way to open up your emotional memory of what makes you feel good and what you actually want to do.”
Carvan says she hopes This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch helps readers realize that “if it was in you once, the ability to lose yourself in something purely fun, I assure you the ability is still in there somewhere, and you shouldn’t feel guilty.” Happily, she adds, “I do not feel guilty at all anymore.”
And what of Carvan + Cumberbatch: Are they still a thing? She says with a laugh, “It’s been six years, so our relationship is now just a fond, everlasting love, not a fiery passion. We’re lifelong companions; he just doesn’t know about it.”
Author photo of Tabitha Carvan by Jimmy Walsh Photography.
The debut author of This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch describes her plunge into obsession, followed by her ascent into unabashed superfan joy.
J.D. Dolan’s latest autobiographical work exposes the author’s journey from a young child’s dream world of innocence and extreme brotherly adulation into the sobering, bitter realization and loss associated with adulthood and tragedy. Dolan was born into an all-American family, though 11 years younger than his brother. Along with his two older sisters, his brother practically raised him. As a result, the brother became for Dolan an idolized figure along the lines of John Wayne. But as American idols live large and hard, occasionally, so too do they fall. Sadly, this is the case with Dolan’s brother. From the beginning, everything he sees in his brother is the definition of cool the Corvette, motorcycles, the Marlboros and Old Spice, the guns, and the girls and Dolan’s infatuated recollections of him are to the point and real. In my earliest memories of my brother, writes Dolan, he’d seemed to me a gigantic figure, a grown-up, an inscrutable god. His vivid descriptions of family life and growing up in the shadow of a restless soul give readers a glimpse of this larger than life figure coming of age, being shipped out to Vietnam, and returning home more mature, quieter, older. Suddenly, the deep brotherly bond becomes an almost painfully mute relationship.
The progression from a healthy, happy family in the midst of the American dream into years of self-imposed silence and growing distance between members is told as if this fate is common to all families to a certain degree. The innocence of youth and physical health steadily decompose, and readers are left feeling the tragic loss which has been Dolan’s all too real experience. Phoenix: A Brother’s Life captures the love and admiration some brothers feel for each other, as well as the changes they undergo as they mature into individuals with separate lives. It would be more comforting in the end (though certainly less realistic) to see something rise out of the ashes, something other than a relief that suffering is finally over, and only a numb feeling of loss remains. Jamie McAlister writes from his home in Charleston, South Carolina.
J.D. Dolan's latest autobiographical work exposes the author's journey from a young child's dream world of innocence and extreme brotherly adulation into the sobering, bitter realization and loss associated with adulthood and tragedy. Dolan was born into an all-American family, though 11 years younger than…
Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
