Adventure/Memoir   High Adventure-Our Ascent of Everest Sir Edmund Hillary               On 29 May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to set foot on the highest point on earth, the peak of Mount Everest at 29035 feet. This is Edmund Hillary's memoir of this remarkable feat.             He writes in a smooth flowing prose, maintaining a charming style and language. He is never dismissive of his achievements nor indulges in self-aggrandizement. 'I was sixteen before I ever saw a mountain.' This sentence starts the memoir and this forthrightness is seen throughout the book. He writes about the 1951 expedition for reconnaissance and exploration of the Southern approach to Everest and the 1952 practice climbing expedition to Cho Lou too.             In mid-twentieth century most of...

Current Affairs/Memoir/History   Cables From Kabul-The Inside Story of the West's Afghanistan Campaign Sherard Cowper-Coles               Sherard Cowper Coles was British ambassador in Afghanistan from 2007-2009 and then British Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan for about a year. For over three years he had a bird’s-eye view of West's effort to bring Afghanistan back to normalcy —normalcy as perceived by West and for West, read predominantly USA— after more than three decades of incessant wars, both external and internal. This book is not an in-depth analysis of West's Afghanistan campaign, which began in 2001 and continues still. These are Sherard's memoirs of his stay and involvement in Afghanistan, albeit, with thoughtful analysis of the Afghanistan situation, the incessant follies which US politicians perpetrated and the helplessness of British government to influence the Campaign as its rol...

                                                                                                                                                                      Memoir   Istanbul: Memories & The City Orhan Pamuk                         A city is built not only of bricks and mortar but also by its people and their lives, their aspirations and their character. At the same time, destiny of its people is not independe...

                                                                                                                                         Memoir/Travel A Year in Provence Peter Mayle I first visited Daryaganj book-bazar, the iconic flea market in Delhi, more than a decade back. I was in Delhi for a few weeks. A friend, the first and perhaps the most passionate bibliophile I met in my life, was then posted at Delhi. On a Sunday, after I have had lunch at his place, he proposed to take me to the book-bazar. I had begun to collect books seriously only a few years back. I was aware that Daryaganj book-bazar occupied a hallowed niche in a bo...

Essay A Mathematician's Apology G.H. Hardy 'I propose to put forward an apology for mathematics...' says G.H. Hardy, one of the greatest mathematicians of twentieth century as he opens the first chapter in this book. He explains in the chapter what he feels a real mathematician ought to be doing; 'It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove a new theorem, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematician have done.' This sadness, this awareness that the powers which were his one source of supreme joy as a creator and which have now abandoned him and the honest admission of the same, pervades the essay like its soul. Another palpable quality is its most measured, pithy but supremely lucid and elegant prose. This is a work of a master craftsman. How I wish Hardy had written more and lengthier books, however a...

Memoir/Science Double Helix- A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA James D. Watson Discovery of the structure of DNA molecule has been hailed as one of the foremost scientific feat of twentieth century. DNA is the molecule of life. Thus, when Francis Crick ‘winged in to the Eagle (a bar at Cambridge) to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life’, he was in fact mouthing the plain truth, though making Watson ‘slightly queasy’. This short book is an account of events which led to this ingenious and monumental discovery, written by one of the lead players in this quest, James D. Watson. Watson was then merely twenty-four years old. He has written these memoirs as he then saw the world, the events, and personalities involved, i.e., through the eyes of a young scientist who is in a hurry to make his mark in the world of science and earn a Noble Prize. Narration is exceedingly frank and unpretentious. There is no allus...

***/*****                                                                                                        Memoir All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot             James Herriot, soon after graduating as a veterinary doctor, joined the practice of Siegfried Farmon, a village veterinarian, as his assistant in the hilly county of Yorkshire Dales in late 1930s. These are memoirs of his initial years in practice...