Sunday, December 9, 2001		Books

All the big achievers
Review by Jai Narain Sharma
A Touch of Greatness: Encounters with the Eminent
by R.M.Lala. Viking, New Delhi. Pages 238. Rs 295.
NO great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men, said Thomas Carlyle. The modern world revolves at an ever-increasing tempo. Where once a man’s surroundings remained substantially unchanged throughout his lifetime, the speed of life now has so increased that sufficient changes in the pattern of his total environment occur almost every week. The business of just "keeping up" is a real problem.

The stress is on mental health
Review by P. K. Vasudeva
Stress in Life and at Work
by Rita Aggarwal. Response Books, New Delhi. Pages 282. Rs 225.
WITH increasing complexities in our life style, the level of stress has been rising sharply. Reliable estimates indicate that around 80 per cent of visits to doctors are to seek advice on stress-related problems or for diseases caused by stress. This is not merely a western phenomenon; stress levels are on the rise throughout Asia and India is no exception.

WRITE VIEW
Of designer cults and self-designed godmen
Review by Randeep Wadehra
Our Beloved Osho
by Swami Arvind Chaitanya. Diamond Pocket Books, New Delhi. Pages 331. Rs 195.
HE evokes strong reactions. Some love to adore him while others love to hate him. Was he a charlatan or a saint, a high priest of free sex or a genius who built a new path to nirvana; perhaps a spiritually evolved godman or maybe just another bohemian out to have a good time at the cost of the gullible? Acharya Rajneesh alias Osho shall remain a focus of interest for a long time to come, as is amply proved by the amount of literature churned out in his name.

Queen’s cousin as Soviet spy
Review by Charles Saumarez Smith
Anthony Blunt: His Live
by Miranda Carter, Macmillan, London. Pages 608.
WHEN I was at school, Sir Anthony Blunt was regarded as the very model of the eminent old Marlburian: the son of the chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris, he had had an exemplary school career, winning a scholarship in mathematics to Trinity College, Cambridge, before going on to become director of the Courtauld Institute, surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, a knight of the realm, and a great expert on French art of the 17thh century, particularly Poussin.

Freedom fight did not change society much
Review by Rumina Sethi
Literature and Nation:Britain and India 1800-1990 edited
by Richard Allen and Harish Trivedi. Routledge in association with The Open University, London. Pages 400.
NATIONALISM is a subject of ongoing interest, more so since Elie Kedourie traced its relationship to culture in the 19th seventies, making it the most powerful political force constituting a major historical form of an identifiable cultural politics.

USA as democratic policemen of the world!
Review by D.R. Chaudhry
Propaganda and the Public Mind — Conversations with Noam Chomsky
by David Barsamian. Madhyam Books, New Delhi. Pages viii + 248. Rs 250.
NOAM Chomsky, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, is a world renowned linguist. His seminal work is highly admired by specialists. He is best known as an incisive political analyst and an indefatigable crusader for democratic causes. Perhaps more than anybody else, he has exposed the narrow self-interest as the core of the American foreign policy, doggedly pursued by the American ruling elites in the garb of exalted humanitarian objectives.

An American solution to Sino-Indian tangle
Review by Harbans Singh
India’s China Perspective
by Subramanian Swamy. Konark Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 1+187. Rs 350.
DR Subramanian Swamy belongs to that rare breed in the country who have their academic achievements to propel their political career. He can hold his own in the world of academics as well as in the world of politics and, therefore, whatever he has to say has to be taken seriously even by his worst critics if they are not to be wrong-footed by subsequent events.