Politics of 1.4bn people in democratic India

Ruchir Sharma talks to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu and interview both Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi offering intimate view inside the lives and minds of India’s people. Sharma also explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired…

3000 years of Arab history

 Arab is generally applied to over 400m people living in the belt of territories spanning  from Morocco to the Gulf.  But for most of history its use was limited to nomadic groups who lived beyond the reach of settled society, and people regarded by civilised peoples  such as Greeks or Chinese – as barbarians. What…

Capitalism is the best economic system

Torben Iversen, a Danish political science and professor and David Soskice, British economist and professor at the London School of Economics addresses does capitalism conflict with democracy with a resounding “no”, Not only capitalism work, it is also the only economic system that works and insists that democracy and the advanced market economy are symbiotic.…

Obama’s autobiography has already sold more than 10 million copies

Michelle Obama’s autobiography has sold more than 10m copies to date according to the former first lady’s publisher Thomas Rabe CEO of 180-year-old German media group Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House, the publishing arm of Bertelsmann, hailed won a fierce bidding war for Barrack and Michelle Obama’s autobiographies in 2017, paying over $67m for a two…

Intriguing vision

In the first book from Irish writer Kevin Breathnach highlights photography, film and literature and long autobiographical pieces that describes coming of age and recalls the spirit of Irish Modernism. The rise of the “Lyric essay, a hybrid of memoir, prose and poetry and cultural criticism that the American polemicist David Shields has argued is…

Unregulated capitalism is bad for women

This book began life as an article in the New York Times, recalls women’s lives in the Soviet bloc between the end of the war and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Their labour was needed, so the state enabled them to work by paying for the work that women do: creches, holiday care and…

Socio-economic consequences of globalisation

Economist Raghuram Rajan’s The Third Pillar, describes an ongoing struggle for balance between the three building blocks of a good society Market, State and Community. Rajan tells us what’s needed to shift our prospects in favour of technological progress that empowers and enriches the many, away from political anger and estrangement. Rajan was awarded the Director’s…

Grievances of marginalised people

  Why young people join terrorist organisations like Isis? Bhutto reveals the plight of poor and downtrodden in Pakistan and England. How does it feel to be told you’re worthless by society and locked out of the opportunities afforded to a privileged few? Her topical novel released amid the controversy surrounding Shamima Begum, the teenager…

Can AI be creative

The creative code examines the nature of creativity, and provide essential guide into how algorithms work with the underpinning mathematical rules and looks at our emotional response to art is a product of our brains reacting to pattern and structure. Computer have already become far smarter than us at crunching big numbers, spotting patterns in…

Carnality and spirit run against each other

The Christians that inspire Jamie Quatro’s debut collection of short stories – set in the modern day Georgia-Tennessee border town would expect final option  if lost in desert and turning to prayer many believers expect to be ignored and turned into stone. Quatro’s hypnotically revealing stories range from the traditional to the fabulist as they…