Love Demoting Vishnu? Readers share 100 books like Demoting Vishnu...

By Anne T. Mocko,

Here are 100 books that Demoting Vishnu fans have personally recommended if you like Demoting Vishnu. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal

Michael Baltutis Author Of The Festival of Indra: Innovation, Archaism, and Revival in a South Asian Performance

From my list on Kathmandu, Nepal.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having spent two years living in Kathmandu over a half-dozen visits, I have had the wonderful opportunity to encounter, learn about, and be baffled by the many local cultures that intersect in Nepal’s capital and largest city. With a PhD in Religious Studies and expertise in the Sanskrit language of classical India, I turned to Nepal to examine religious life on the ground. Living in Kathmandu during the second People’s Movement of 2006 – and like everybody else then, under a “shoot to kill” curfew for three weeks – left an indelible mark on me and my scholarship on this magnificent place. 

Michael's book list on Kathmandu, Nepal

Michael Baltutis Why did Michael love this book?

This award-winning study combines accessible translations with local and global studies of the goddess Svasthani and her domestic devotees. A goddess little known outside of Nepal, Svasthani is embodied in the text itself and celebrated by families in the cold month of January.

Her only recent depiction as an icon in her own temple is a testament to the ever-changing forms of religion and culture in a corner of the world where living goddesses have long held significant power. 

By Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Reciting the Goddess as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reciting the Goddess is the first book-length study of Nepal's goddess Svasthani and the popular Svasthanivratakatha textual tradition. In the centuries following its origin as a simple local legend in the sixteenth century, the Svasthanivratakatha developed into a comprehensive Purana text that is still widely celebrated today among Nepal's Hindus with an annual month-long recitation. Jessica Birkenholtz uses the Svasthanivratakatha as a medium through
which to view the ways in which political and cultural shifts among Nepal's ruling elite were taken up by the general public.

Drawing on both archival and ethnographic research, the book examines Svasthani and the Svasthanivratakatha…


Book cover of Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal

Michael Baltutis Author Of The Festival of Indra: Innovation, Archaism, and Revival in a South Asian Performance

From my list on Kathmandu, Nepal.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having spent two years living in Kathmandu over a half-dozen visits, I have had the wonderful opportunity to encounter, learn about, and be baffled by the many local cultures that intersect in Nepal’s capital and largest city. With a PhD in Religious Studies and expertise in the Sanskrit language of classical India, I turned to Nepal to examine religious life on the ground. Living in Kathmandu during the second People’s Movement of 2006 – and like everybody else then, under a “shoot to kill” curfew for three weeks – left an indelible mark on me and my scholarship on this magnificent place. 

Michael's book list on Kathmandu, Nepal

Michael Baltutis Why did Michael love this book?

Far Out traces the history of tourism in Kathmandu, the capital of the country of Nepal which had been effectively closed to Westerners from 1847-1951.

Resembling travel literature based in South Asia and the Himalaya, its research conducted by a trained social anthropologist draws upon artistic, literary, and historical records that go well beyond typical sources and stories. The takeaway here is “the West” – especially after the Chinese closure of Tibet and the exile of the Dalai Lama – searching for lost exotic and spiritual worlds in the newly re-opened Nepal, a search that effectively lasted until Nixon’s war on drugs. 

By Mark Liechty,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Far Out as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Westerners have long imagined the Himalayas as the world's last untouched place and repository of redemptive power and wisdom. Beatniks, hippie seekers, spiritual tourists, mountain climbers diverse groups of people have traveled there over the years, searching for their own personal Shangri-La. In Far Out, Mark Liechty traces the Western fantasies that captured the imagination of tourists in the decades after World War II, asking how the idea of Nepal shaped the everyday cross-cultural interactions that it made possible. Emerging from centuries of political isolation but eager to engage the world, Nepalis struggled to make sense of the hordes of…


Book cover of The Royal Ghosts: Stories

Michael Baltutis Author Of The Festival of Indra: Innovation, Archaism, and Revival in a South Asian Performance

From my list on Kathmandu, Nepal.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having spent two years living in Kathmandu over a half-dozen visits, I have had the wonderful opportunity to encounter, learn about, and be baffled by the many local cultures that intersect in Nepal’s capital and largest city. With a PhD in Religious Studies and expertise in the Sanskrit language of classical India, I turned to Nepal to examine religious life on the ground. Living in Kathmandu during the second People’s Movement of 2006 – and like everybody else then, under a “shoot to kill” curfew for three weeks – left an indelible mark on me and my scholarship on this magnificent place. 

Michael's book list on Kathmandu, Nepal

Michael Baltutis Why did Michael love this book?

Samrat Upadhyay’s English-language novels and short stories often read like anthropological work on Nepal’s middle class.
The Royal Ghosts fictionalizes the sluggish economy in and urban migration to contemporary Kathmandu, the decade-long civil war that ended along with the collapse of the Hindu monarchy in 2006, and the political tensions that defined Nepal in the first decade of the current millennium. His attention to the previous king’s grasp at power using political propaganda in the form of monumental billboards in 1990 (in “Supreme Pronouncements”) reflects my own interest in similar rhetoric fifteen years later.

I also like the use of the popular religious imagery when in “Chintamani’s Women”, the main character pauses briefly at the picture of the elephant-headed Ganesh on his kitchen wall as he offers a quick prayer for his deceased mother and sick father (RG 130). 

By Samrat Upadhyay,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Royal Ghosts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With emotional precision and narrative subtlety, The Royal Ghosts features characters trying to reconcile their true desires with the forces at work in Nepali society. Against the backdrop of the violent Maoist insurgencies that have claimed thousands of lives, these characters struggle with their duties to their aging parents, an oppressive caste system, and the complexities of arranged marriage. In the end, they manage to find peace and connection, often where they least expect it— with the people directly in front of them. These stories brilliantly examine not only Kathmandu during a time of political crisis and cultural transformation but…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of The Country is Yours: Contemporary Nepali Literature

Michael Baltutis Author Of The Festival of Indra: Innovation, Archaism, and Revival in a South Asian Performance

From my list on Kathmandu, Nepal.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having spent two years living in Kathmandu over a half-dozen visits, I have had the wonderful opportunity to encounter, learn about, and be baffled by the many local cultures that intersect in Nepal’s capital and largest city. With a PhD in Religious Studies and expertise in the Sanskrit language of classical India, I turned to Nepal to examine religious life on the ground. Living in Kathmandu during the second People’s Movement of 2006 – and like everybody else then, under a “shoot to kill” curfew for three weeks – left an indelible mark on me and my scholarship on this magnificent place. 

Michael's book list on Kathmandu, Nepal

Michael Baltutis Why did Michael love this book?

Collected, translated, and introduced by the prolific author Manjushree Thapa, this volume contains poetry and short stories of various lengths and from a variety of Nepalese languages.

Categorized by perplexity, desire, liberation, and vision, these otherwise unrelated works use themes of food, death, work, migration, and marriage to convey the humanity at the core of a landlocked country’s transition to democracy and a new global economy after the first People’s Movement of 1990. 

By Manjushree Thapa (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Country is Yours as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America

Pamela Haag Author Of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture

From my list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I got interested in American guns and gun culture through the backdoor. I’d never owned a gun, participated in gun control politics, or thought too much about guns at all. Guns might not have interested me—but ghosts did. I was beguiled by the haunting legend of the Winchester rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who believed in the late 1800s that she was being tormented by the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester rifles. As I scoured the archives for rare glimpses of Sarah, however, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of largely unexplored sources about a much larger story, and secretive mystery: that of the gun industry itself.

Pamela's book list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture

Pamela Haag Why did Pamela love this book?

Busse offers the new perspective of an insider—an erstwhile gun executive. I’ve always held that the gun industry has gotten far too little attention historically, and that commercial forces substantially helped to create and then maintain the American gun mystique and culture long after the “frontier” closed. Busse’s work shows just how explicitly the gun industry today, since 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, relies on “manufactured fear” to push products. The book teems with examples of fear marketing, including endorsements from social media celebrities that created a new breed of “couch commandos,” steeped in the “glorification of violence, the utter rejection of political correctness, and the freewheeling masculinity and objectification of women.” And in Busse’s view it’s not just that gun marketing has changed, but that the gun industry has transformed American culture itself, radicalizing it and shifting it toward authoritarianism.

We’ve seen and felt this malevolence of…

By Ryan Busse,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gunfight as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point.
 
As an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and conservationist–all things that the firearms industry was built on–Ryan Busse chased a childhood dream and built a successful career selling millions of firearms for one of America’s most popular gun companies.

But blinded by the promise of massive profits, the gun industry abandoned its self-imposed decency in favor of hardline conservatism and McCarthyesque internal policing, sowing irreparable division in our politics and society.…


Book cover of Q

Caraline Brown Author Of The Candlelit Menagerie

From my list on set in a post apocalyptic future.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love writing historical fiction. I enjoy the research and creating long-lost worlds filled with little-known historical accuracies that intrigue my readers. It is no surprise then that I enjoy reading about the future - the other side of the coin. I always find it interesting to see how writers create a post-apocalyptic society. What was the catastrophic event? (TCE) What caused it and how do the different characters react to adversity when their old world is taken away from them? Inevitably they have to survive in the new system but will they have learned their lesson or will they return to their old ways?  

Caraline's book list on set in a post apocalyptic future

Caraline Brown Why did Caraline love this book?

What happens when you take the meritocracy to extremes and you can only access the best of food and housing etc when your Q is the highest? Dalcher creates an interesting future world, damning of social engineering and genetic manipulation, and reminds us that it was less than a hundred years ago that certain war-hungry fellas (and a few women) salivated over thoughts of a perfect Aryan race. A great page-turner but with a few ‘Deus ex Machina' plot twists with which I’m still struggling. Nevertheless a very worthy read.

By Christina Dalcher,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Q as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**CHRISTINA DALCHER'S GRIPPING NEW THRILLER FEMLANDIA IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW!**

'Terrifyingly plausible' Louise Candlish
'Devastating and brilliant' Woman & Home
'Thought-provoking' Alice Feeney
'Shocking . . . A powerful tale' Cosmopolitan
'Timely' Kia Abdullah

IN THIS WORLD, PERFECTION IS EVERYTHING.

It begins as a way to make things fairer. An education system that will benefit everyone. It's all in the name of progress.

This is what Elena Fairchild believes. As a teacher in one of the government's elite schools for children with high 'Q' scores, she witnesses the advantages first-hand.

But when Elena's own daughter scores lower than expected,…


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Book cover of The Bangalore Detectives Club

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra,

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu.

When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. But…

Book cover of The Age of Reform

Benjamin M. Friedman Author Of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

From my list on economics, religion, and society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an economist, now in my fiftieth year as a professor at Harvard. While much of my work has focused on economic policy – questions like the effects of government budget deficits, guidelines for the conduct of U.S. monetary policy, and what actions to take in response to a banking or more general financial crisis – in recent years I’ve also addressed broader issues surrounding the connections between economics and society. Several years ago, in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, I examined the implications of our economy’s growth, or stagnation, for the social, political, and ultimately moral character of our society. My most recent book explores the connections between economic thinking and religious thinking.

Benjamin's book list on economics, religion, and society

Benjamin M. Friedman Why did Benjamin love this book?

A classic book by one of our country’s most eminent historians, The Age of Reform traces the interplay between American politics and the clashing forces within American society from the time of Jefferson to the time of Franklin Roosevelt. In between, the great social movements – pro-and anti-slavery, populism, progressivism, the New Deal – all play out on a vast canvas. Religion is not the centerpiece of Hofstadter’s narrative, but it’s there throughout, sometimes on stage and at other times in the background. I’ve been recommending this book to my students for years.

By Richard Hofstadter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Age of Reform as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and preeminent historian comes a landmark in American political thought that examines the passion for progress and reform during 1890 to 1940. 

The Age of Reform searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise.


Book cover of Innovative State

Jaideep Prabhu Author Of How Should a Government Be?: The New Levers of State Power

From my list on what modern governments can do for their citizens.

Why am I passionate about this?

A professor of business at the University of Cambridge, I've spent over two decades studying innovation. I've been particularly interested in “frugal innovation”: how small teams now use ubiquitous tools and technologies to achieve what only large corporations or governments could a decade ago. I've written two books about this phenomenon: Jugaad Innovation and Frugal Innovation about the private sector. Whenever I gave talks about them, there was always the question: What does this mean for governments? I began to study how the state could use new technologies and ways of organizing to deliver services to its citizens better, faster and cheaper, and how governments should regulate and cultivate such tools used by the private sector.

Jaideep's book list on what modern governments can do for their citizens

Jaideep Prabhu Why did Jaideep love this book?

The author of this book, Aneesh Chopra, became the first chief technology officer of the United States government in 2009. Prior to that, he was the Secretary of Technology for Virginia and managing director for a health care think tank. As CTO for the US government, Chopra led the administration’s attempts to create a more open, tech-savvy government. In this book, he draws on his experience and interviews with policy experts and tech insiders to show how government can establish a new paradigm for the internet era, one that allows us to tackle the most challenging problems, from economic development to veteran affairs. Once again, it was a source of inspiration for me. My own book extends his discussion of the US federal government to the state and city level, as well as looks at many other countries around the world, both developed and developing.

By Aneesh Chopra,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Innovative State as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the last twenty years, our economy and our society have been completely revolutionized by technology. As Aneesh Chopra shows in Innovative State, once it became clear how much this would change America, a movement arose around the idea that these same technologies could reshape and improve government. But the idea languished, and while the private sector innovated, our government stalled. The election of Barack Obama offered a new opportunity. In 2009, Aneesh Chopra was named the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Previously the Secretary of Technology for Virginia and managing director for a health care think…


Book cover of MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman

Simon Henderson Author Of After King Fahd: Succession in Saudi Arabia

From my list on understanding modern Saudi Arabia.

Why am I passionate about this?

British by birth, American by naturalization, Simon Henderson started in journalism as a trainee at the BBC before becoming its correspondent in Pakistan. Joining the Financial Times a year later, he was promptly sent to Iran to cover the 1979 Islamic revolution and went back again for the U.S. embassy hostage crisis. He now analyzes the Gulf states, energy, and the nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan as the Baker fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Simon's book list on understanding modern Saudi Arabia

Simon Henderson Why did Simon love this book?

The assiduous New York Times reporter digs deeply into the persona of the Saudi crown prince, and is rewarded with many anecdotes. Unsurprisingly, most are anonymous. A revealing one is: “One foreign official recalled that the prince’s leg never stopped bouncing during their meeting, making him wonder if the prince was nervous or on some sort of stimulant.”

By Ben Hubbard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked MBS as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Financial Times Book Best Book of the Year 2020

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year 2020

The gripping, untold story of how Saudi Arabia's secretive and mercurial new ruler rose to power.

Even in his youth as a prince among thousands of princes, Mohammed bin Salman nurtured sweeping ambitions. He wanted power - enough of it to reshape his hyper-conservative, insular Islamic kingdom.

When his elderly father took the throne in 2015, MBS got his chance. As the hands-on-ruler, he made seismic changes, working doggedly to overhaul the kingdom's economy, loosen its strict Islamic social codes and…


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier,

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. Brené Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher,…

Book cover of Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism

David Ellerman Author Of Neo-Abolitionism: Abolishing Human Rentals in Favor of Workplace Democracy

From my list on a fair and just private property market economy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since my graduate student days in philosophy and economics, I have slowly come to understand more and more the case for workplace democracy based on normative principles (i.e., the inalienability, property, and democratic principles), not just the obvious consequentialist or pragmatic arguments based on increased productivity (people working jointly for themselves), less worker alienation, and eliminating the divide down the middle of most enterprises between employers and employees. In addition to two decades of teaching university economics, I have co-founded several consulting companies dedicated to implementing these principles in practice, the Industrial Cooperative Association in Massachusetts (now the ICA Group) and the Institute for Economic Democracy in Slovenia, where I have retired.

David's book list on a fair and just private property market economy

David Ellerman Why did David love this book?

This short book by the late Staughton Lynd is the best summary of the radical principles upon which America was founded. Lynd goes deep into the intellectual history of the underlying principles in English and European history. In spite of writing such an important book and perhaps due to his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, Lynd was not given tenure as a historian at Yale University. He then became a labor lawyer and lived the rest of his life as a labor activist.

By Staughton Lynd,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now an established classic, Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism was the first book to explore this alternative current of American political thought. Stemming back to the seventeenth-century English Revolution, many questioned private property, the sovereignty of the nation-state, and slavery, and affirmed the common man's ability to govern. By the time of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine was the great exemplar of the alternative intellectual tradition. In the nineteenth century, the antislavery movement took hold of Thomas Paine's ideas and fashioned them into an ideology that ultimately justified civil war. This updated edition contains a preface by the author, which…


Book cover of Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal
Book cover of Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal
Book cover of The Royal Ghosts: Stories

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