scorecardresearch
Add as a preferred source on Google
Thursday, January 8, 2026
HomePageTurnerBook Excerpts

Book Excerpts

84% of Indian IT employees have fatty liver disease. Cutting calories won’t fix it

In 'Sick Nation', Karan Sarin offers a proactive, preventative protocol for metabolic health—designed to detect and address insulin resistance in Indians.

‘Deadline’ originally meant a line in a US prison yard. Cross it and you’d be shot dead

In 'Stories of Words and Phrases', Sumanto Chattopadhyay peels back the layers of language and takes us on a rollicking ride to demystify the origins and meanings of common words and quirky idiomatic expressions.

Salman Khan didn’t like how ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ ended. He wanted Nandini to choose Sameer

In her book, 'Salman Khan', Mohar Basu traces the actor's journey through controversies and comebacks, blockbusters and hard-learnt lessons of life.

‘Tamils will all be killed.’ The terror of Sri Lanka’s militant monks

In 'The Robe and the Sword', Sonia Faleiro uncovers how militant monks in Asia have transformed a tradition of nonviolence into a tool of terror.

Indians and their cultural inferiority complex, explains Romila Thapar

In this chapter from 'Speaking of History', Romila Thapar and Namit Arora discuss the cultural inferiority complex among Indians.

Caste Hindus lobbied the Constituent Assembly to defend untouchability as a ‘religious right’

In Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History, Rohit De and Ornit Shani show how upper-caste Hindus tried to protect caste privilege by presenting themselves as a minority under threat.

The modern man is a lethal mix of entitled narcissism, crippling self-doubt

In his book, 'Memes for Mummyji', Santosh Desai chronicles the everyday theatre of Indian life in the digital age.

What made the Goa stone the most coveted antidote of its time

The stone was made from a small quantity of natural bezoar blended into a paste along with various other substances meant to enhance its healing properties.

Indian intellectuals still can’t decode Narendra Modi

In Modi's Mission, Berjis Desai traces Modi’s national rise and why it unsettled India’s intellectual elite.

When gangsters Amirzada and Alamzeb made an enemy of Bollywood actor Dilip Kumar

In 'When It All Began', Rakesh Maria reflects on the tumultuous history of Mumbai's underworld, tracing the full arc of the city's gang wars.

On Camera

Why Pinarayi Vijayan is going soft on an Ezhava leader’s anti-Muslim hate speech

Pinarayi Vijayan once called Vellappally Natesan, the general secretary of SNDP Yogam, Kerala’s Pravin Togadia. Now he is giving his hate speech a free pass.

500% tariffs ahead for India? Trump’s lined up a big bad Bill for countries buying Russian oil

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says bill will be 'well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace and Putin is all talk, continuing to kill the innocent'.

Trump trains guns on US defence giants, singles out Raytheon & what it means for India

Trump said Raytheon was ‘least responsive’ to needs of US military. Raytheon makes Excalibur ammunition for M777 guns & Javelin anti-tank missile—both in use with Indian Army.

A year-end Mea Culpa in National Interest—The Army-Islam combo doesn’t kill democracy

Many of you might think I got something so wrong in National Interest pieces written this year. I might disagree! But some deserve a Mea Culpa. I’d deal with the most recent this week.