April 23, 2016
What is amongst the better ways to mark the ‘World Book Day’? Going through a list of 101 must-read books (tailored for Indian readers) doesn’t seem like a bad idea
Harsh Gupta was apparently partly inspired and partly exasperated with my reading lists; more importantly, he did not find them to be of much use to him or most people outside the “nerd bubble” or ivory tower. He has therefore taken the liberty to create his own list (with a little input from me), which is supposed to be more relevant to the homo discens dextera indicus politicus in a globalised world. So here are our 101 suggestions!
The Mahabharata – Vyaasa
Understanding Poverty – Banerjee, Mookherjee, Benabou
A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar – KA Nilakanta Sastri
The Deniers – Lawrence Solomon
A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers – VS Ramachandran
Nudge – Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein
India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy – Ramachandra Guha
Minimum Wages – David Neumark
India Unbound – Gurcharan Das
On Human Nature – EO Wilson
Forgotten Continent – Michael Reid
The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 – CH Philips, MD Wainwright
Rethinking the welfare state – Ronald Daniels
The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 – Irfan Habib
Development as Freedom – Amartya Sen
Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 – Janet Abu-Lughod
The Fallacy of Campaign Reform
The Law – Frederic Bastiat
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (9 volumes)
My Country, My Life – LK Advani
Indian Summer – Alex Von Tunzelmann
Losing Ground – Charles Murray
The Welfare State we are in – James Bartholomew
On Liberty – Mill
Liberal Fascism – Jonah Goldberg
The Venture of Islam (3 vols) – Marshall Hodgson
Imagining India – Nandan Nilekani
Common Sense – Thomas Paine
What Evolution Is – Ernst Mayr
Taxing Ourselves – Slamrod, Bakija
Global Tax Revolution – Edwards, Mitchell
The Best-Laid Plans – O’ Toole
China’s Deep Reform – Dittmer, Liu
The Antitrust Religion – Edwin Rockefeller
Water for Sale – Frederik Segerfeldt
More Guns, Less Crime – Lott
The Blank Slate – Stephen Pinker
School Choice: The Findings
The Mystery of Capital – Hernando de Soto
The Evolution of Cooperation – Robert Axelrod
Eminent Historians – Shourie
The Road to Serfdom – Hayek
There is No Alternative – Claire Berlinski
The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 – Niall Ferguson
Anarchy, State and Utopia – Robert Nozick
India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal – Ashley Tellis
Political Liberalism – John Rawls
The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species – Sarah Blaffer Hardy
Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan – Akbar
Complete Works of Aristotle – Jonathan Barnes
Engaging India – Strobe Talbott
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics – Mearsheimer
Black Rednecks and White Liberals – Sowell
India’s China War – Neville Maxwell
Life at the Bottom – Theodore Dalrymple
The Physiology of Truth: Neuroscience and Human Knowledge Neuronal Man – Jean-Pierre Changeaux
In Defense of Globalization – Bhagwati
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft
Democracy in America – Alex Tocqueville
Two Treatises of Government – Locke
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse – Partha Chatterjee
The Open Society and its Enemies (2 volumes) – Popper
The Ethical Brain – Michael Gazzaniga
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 1500-2000 – Paul Kennedy
India’s Political Economy 1947-2004: The Gradual Revolution – Francine Frankel
Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations – Francis Gavin
India and the United States: Estranged Democracies 1941–1991 – Dennis Kux
Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman
Decolonizing the Hindu Mind – Koenraad Elst
State-directed Development – Kohli
The Politics of India since Independence – Paul Brass
Indian Philosophy (2 vols) – S. Radhakrishnan
Islamic Humanism – Lenn Goodman
Economics in One Lesson – Henry Hazlitt
Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime – Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy – Bharat Karnad
Alberuni’s India – Al-Biruni
Brothers Against The Raj – Leonard Gordon
Pakistan: A Hard Country – Anatol Lieven
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols) – Jaroslav Pelikan
India’s Israel Policy – PR Kumaraswamy
Nationalism – Craig Calhoun
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha – Michael Coogan
Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750– Jonathan Israel
Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752 – Jonathan Israel
Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750-1790 – Jonathan Israel
In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth – JP Mallory
India: A Million Mutinies Now – VS Naipaul
Education and Capitalism – Walberg
History of Dharmasastra – PV Kane
Descartes’ Error – Antonio Damasio
In Service of Emergent India – Jaswant Singh
The Language Instinct – Stephen Pinker
War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years – Srinath Raghavan
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong– Marc Hauser
Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir – Mridu Rai
The Economic History of India, 1857-1947 – Tirthankar Roy
The Improving State of the World – Goklany
The Road to Monetary Union in Europe: The Emperor, the Kings, and the Genies – Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa
First published in 2012 at Centre Right India.
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