A recommended primer for professionals looking to conduct business with India and for interested laypeople.
Debut author Richards brings five decades of close involvement with India to this efficient, perceptive exploration of the teeming country.
When it comes to India, manufactured tropes for easy consumption are readily available: it’s the world’s largest democracy and a land of mysticism and offshore call centers. To his credit, Richards is emphatically against discussing the “idea of India,” focusing instead on understanding not just the country itself, but also its citizens. Although India’s inclusion as one of the BRIC economies comes with an attendant descriptor as one of the world’s growing middle-class consumer markets, the author laudably focuses on the entire country’s demographics, not just a select segment. The book’s central thesis is that India’s operating system, built on the vestiges of what the British left behind in 1947, creaks along to uneven standards and could use a tune-up. This “Continuing Raj,” Richards argues, comprises “mastodons” (progress-blocking models featuring tired and divisive thinking from the “hoary past”) and “elephants” (more progressive prescriptions that the author argues the country needs). This comparison is a useful tool; when it comes to physical infrastructure, for example, the book deems the preoccupation with transportation a “mastodon” and provision of electricity to all as an “elephant.” The book’s arguments continue to hold weight even after the 2014 elections that swept the controversial Narendra Modi into power as prime minister, especially because, as Richards states, the country’s rate of social evolution is largely independent of government programs. Fundamental reforms are also fairly unlikely; Modi, Richards points out, is both “the master and the prisoner of the Continuing Raj.” Systematically dissecting practically every aspect of Indian society, from class and religion to national security and education, this volume commendably recognizes uniquely Indian quirks such as the ubiquitous Indian advice to “Do one thing”: “an urgent plea Indians make to emphasize their own priorities and what they hope to instill as top of mind in another person.” Even if it sometimes appears that Richards may have bitten off more than he can chew, this book is still an easily digestible treatise about an immensely complex country.
A recommended primer for professionals looking to conduct business with India and for interested laypeople.Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-4335-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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