Here are 100 books that Walking is a Way of Knowing fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have had an affinity for nature since my childhood, but I did not train as an ecologist. An increasing concern about the environment, and the people more adversely affected by ecological degradation, made me switch careers early. I have worked on issues around conservation, land and forest rights of indigenous communities, and on the importance of nature in cities. Today I am an educator with a responsibility to communicate not only about environmental issues, but why it is a priority for communities in India. I am proud to be a part of the community of women writers on the environment in India whose voices and experiences need to be heard.
We often grapple with the balance between the traditional and the modern in our lives. There are livelihoods we may perceive as primitive, and yet the products from these livelihoods find everyday use in our lives—palm jaggery to sweeten our desserts, flowers to adorn our hair, grass mats to rest on, wooden instruments that produce music and so many more. In our cocooned city lives, we forget about the millions in the villages engaged in these livelihoods doing “exceptional—yet perfectly ordinary—things to earn a living”.
Nine Rupees an Hour chronicles the struggles and aspirations of these extraordinary men and women. I remember being unable to put the book down. Everything in this book was at once familiar and at the same time unfamiliar. I have known, and used, many of the products described in the book, but how oblivious I had been about the grueling lives of those involved in…
In a rapidly urbanising nation, rural India is being erased from the popular imagination. Through her five years of travelling across the villages of Tamil Nadu, Aparna Karthikeyan gets to know men and women who do exceptional—yet perfectly ordinary—things to earn a living. She documents, through ten of these stories, the transformations, aspirations and disruptions of the last twenty-five years. The people she meets force these questions of her, and her reader: What is the culture we seek to preserve? What will become of food security without farmers? How can ‘development’ exclude 833 million people?
I have had an affinity for nature since my childhood, but I did not train as an ecologist. An increasing concern about the environment, and the people more adversely affected by ecological degradation, made me switch careers early. I have worked on issues around conservation, land and forest rights of indigenous communities, and on the importance of nature in cities. Today I am an educator with a responsibility to communicate not only about environmental issues, but why it is a priority for communities in India. I am proud to be a part of the community of women writers on the environment in India whose voices and experiences need to be heard.
How would you deal with surviving a disastrous flood that swallows your childhood home? Krupa Ge does this by channeling her rage and anguish into a book. Writing about the devastating floods that hit her hometown Chennai, in southern India, in 2015, she deftly weaves her own experience of being stranded in the flood, worrying about her family, into the larger narrative of state apathy and culpability. At the core, this is a book about environmental injustice. The poorest in the city were the worst affected, losing family and all their possessions. And yet it was also the poor who showed extraordinary resilience and compassion: the fishermen who rescued stranded and recovered bodies or sanitation workers themselves affected but who turned up to clean the city.
Through meticulous research, the book unravels the causes of this man-made disaster, mincing no words in holding the state responsible for what it was…
I have had an affinity for nature since my childhood, but I did not train as an ecologist. An increasing concern about the environment, and the people more adversely affected by ecological degradation, made me switch careers early. I have worked on issues around conservation, land and forest rights of indigenous communities, and on the importance of nature in cities. Today I am an educator with a responsibility to communicate not only about environmental issues, but why it is a priority for communities in India. I am proud to be a part of the community of women writers on the environment in India whose voices and experiences need to be heard.
I have two pets cats, and my relationship with them is pretty straightforward—I care for them to the point of being obsessive about meeting their every need. Unlike me, the communities described in this book have a range of relationships with the non-human species they share space with. Care of course, and kinship, but also relationships of conflict and violence. Complex themes such as animal ethics, Hindu nationalism, the politics of exclusion, conservation, and even inter-species love are written about against the backdrop of the everyday lives of the villagers. The binary of domestic cow and the wild bear and the pigs that fall in between are all a part of this narrative of the tangled relationship between humans and animals. For those of us who balk at reading anthropological works, this book is a pleasure and easy read for the relatable style of writing.
What does -it mean to live and die in relation to other animals? Animal Intimacies posits this central question alongside the intimate--and intense--moments of care, kinship, violence, politics, indifference, and desire that occur between human and nonhuman animals. Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the mountain villages of India's Central Himalayas, Radhika Govindrajan's book explores the number of ways that human and animal interact to cultivate relationships as interconnected, related beings. Whether it is through the study of the affect and ethics of ritual animal sacrifice, analysis of the right-wing political project of cow-protection, or examination of villagers' talk about…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I have had an affinity for nature since my childhood, but I did not train as an ecologist. An increasing concern about the environment, and the people more adversely affected by ecological degradation, made me switch careers early. I have worked on issues around conservation, land and forest rights of indigenous communities, and on the importance of nature in cities. Today I am an educator with a responsibility to communicate not only about environmental issues, but why it is a priority for communities in India. I am proud to be a part of the community of women writers on the environment in India whose voices and experiences need to be heard.
Who among us has not looked at our published academic paper and felt that tinge of sadness at so much left unsaid? This book is about all that is left unsaid—an entertaining account of the many stories behind the data collected for research that does not make it into our sanitised published papers. Traversing different parts of North India, two young women carrying out conservation research encounter not just nature but also opinionated men, corrupt officials, and a bureaucracy that worked at a frustrating snail’s pace. The accounts in the book are hilarious and relatable to anyone who has done field research, ecological or otherwise in India, where data collection is interspersed with memorable and amusing everyday conversations with a range of people. This is a book I would have loved to write myself. And I hope I still can someday, in my own way.
Thirty-two years ago, I got my start as a chef by cooking in a shoebox cafe in Boston that played with curious Asian ingredients. Ten years later, after using lots of Asian cookbooks, I was incorporating Thai and Vietnamese cooking into my menus at the restaurant I was running. A few years after that, I opened and ran a Vietnamese restaurant in Cambridge (unfortunately, after major success, it burned down after a year). After this, the tourism board of Malaysia sent me on a four-week trip to write about the street food for FoodArts magazine. It is these experiences that greatly influenced my interest in Southeast Asian cooking.
This is a glossy cookbook published first in India and then in 1994 by an Australian division of Harper Collins. I’ve made many, many recipes in this book and it’s opened my eyes to the meat-free, texturally complex cuisine of South India. The careful but dynamic mix of ingredients such as mustard seeds, curry leaves, dried coconut, dal, and cumin seeds used in tempering dishes brings the food to life. I recommend this book to the curious and adventuresome home cook who enjoys shopping at Indian markets. The recipes are solid and for the most part easy once you become familiar with its cuisine and techniques.
"Dakshin" in an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "south." It symbolizes what this Indian cookbook is all about - the best and most delicious of South Indian vegetarian cuisine.
Filled with tempting recipes and beautiful photographs, Dakshin: Vegetarian Cooking from South India presents the finest cooking from the region. Drawn from the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, and the union territory of Pondicherry, the recipes in this vegetarian cookbook bring traditional South Indian cooking within reach of any cook in any kitchen.
From sambars and rasams, to cooling desserts and sweet treats, Dakshin takes you through the…
I’ve always been in love with books and writing, but in high school I realized I wanted to touch people’s lives on an emotional level. A friend told me my writing had changed their perspective about an incident where their brother almost died. It made me think that if I could positively impact one person with a play, what else could I do (even for complete strangers). We all struggle with emotions, and it’s okay! We should be allowed to feel our emotions—regardless of our age or gender identity. Everyone should know that they’re not alone; emotions are universal. They are part of what connects us to each other.
As you can probably see, I like books that are emotionally provocative. This book does just that! It’s just such a different kind of story where the protagonist was built to be exactly like someone else, including memories and life, just in case something happens to the original. It’s a raw look at who someone really is and how they become that person.
Eva's life is not her own. She is a creation, an abomination - an echo. Made by the Weavers as a copy of someone else, she is expected to replace a girl named Amarra, her 'other', if she ever died. Eva studies what Amarra does, what she eats, what it's like to kiss her boyfriend, Ray. So when Amarra is killed in a car crash, Eva should be ready.
But fifteen years of studying never prepared her for this.
Now she must abandon everything she's ever known - the guardians who raised her, the boy she's forbidden to love -…
Citizen Scientist begins with this extraordinary statement by the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, “Study any obscure insect for a week and you will then know more than anyone else on the planet.”
As the author chases the obscure Western red-bellied tiger beetle across New…
I am the granddaughter of an American boy who grew up in India at the end of the British Raj. I have a personal interest in the time period because of this, but I wanted to see more books about the Raj that weren’t from the British perspective. I wrote my own novel from the unique angle of Americans in India. During my historical research, I specifically looked for books that represented Indian opinions and mindsets of that period. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors, but with this reading list, I want to help shed light on the other side of the story.
I have not come across many books about Indian women in power, but this book is an amazing exploration of how feminine strength can hold up against a deeply patriarchal society and time period.
The story sucked me in as the main character, a young princess coming of age, gets caught up in romance and subterfuge; by the end, the story takes a sad and heartbreaking turn as India’s rich history of its many kingdoms falls to the British Raj.
Born to the Royal House of Balmer, Jaya Singh experiences the influences of Western culture as a selfless wife, strong leader, and courageous individual in a national struggle.
Jaya Singh is the intelligent, beautiful, and compassionate daughter of the Maharajah and Maharani of Balmer. Raised in the thousand-year-old tradition of purdah, a strict regime of seclusion, silence, and submission, Jaya is ill-prepared to assume the role of Regent Maharani of Sirpur upon the death of her decadent, Westernized husband. But Jaya bravely fulfills her duty and soon finds herself thrust into the center of a roiling political battle in which…
I'm a historian of global capitalism and South Asia, writing about corporations as they are and how they could be. I've looked at India with the eyes of an outsider, drawing on my experiences growing up in 1990s Eastern Europe during a time of political upheaval and shock privatizations as the old communist order crumbled. Having witnessed the rise of a new class of monopolists and oligarchs in its stead, I became interested in the many different ways capitalists exercise power in society over time and around the world, and how we as ordinary citizens relate to them. I'm now interested in thinkers, activists, and entrepreneurs who have tried to experiment with alternatives.
We started in the snow-capped peaks of Davos and end in the sun-baked forested hills of Niyamgiri in Odisha, where Adivasis(India’s “tribals” or indigenous groups) are fighting land seizures by multinational mining companies like Vedanta. This remarkable book, co-authored by anthropologist and regional expert Felix Padel (who happens to be Charles Darwin’s grandson) and activist and filmmaker Samarendra Das, shows how such distant spaces are connected. It brings attention to the commodity chain of aluminum, from the bauxite in the ground to the finished industrial and consumer products all around us, and faithfully captures both corporate strategies and indigenous perspectives (a rare feat). Now in its second edition, Out of this Earth continues to inspire a deeper understanding of capitalism as a total system and provides hope to those challenging it.
While we all depend on this earth, do we really understand how nature sustains us, and what we are doing to it through mining? What is the real cost of the unending extraction of minerals for power, for industries, for our food packaging, vehicles, arms and ammunition and this development on local inhabitants and ecosystems? Who benefits from this, and whose lives are destroyed? Out of this Earth answers these questions through a detailed account of the aluminium industry. Focusing on the Khondalite mountains in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, capped by some of the world's best bauxite deposits,…
There’s a surging Western school of thought which claims that there’s no Asia. Really? Just look at my personal cultural connections with all corners of Asia. As a Hindu Sindhi Singaporean, I can relate directly to India and Southeast Asia, which has an Indic base. My name, “Mahbubani”, has Arabic/Persian roots. “Mahbub” means “beloved”. My mother took me to Buddhist temples when I was a boy, too, giving me an intimate connection with China, Japan, and Korea. In short, Asia is intimately connected. The goal of my ten books has been to give voice to the larger Asian story in a world imprisoned by Western perspectives.
Not all the struggles of Asians are with Western societies. There are also divisions and rivalries within Asia, including, sadly, between the two Asian giants: India and China. Kanti Bajpai’s book explains the complex, neurotic relationship between the two Asian powers well. Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh once wisely observed, “The world is large enough to accommodate the growth ambitions of both India and China.”
A decade after he said that China and India clashed again in the Himalayas in June 2020, plunging relations to a new low. The Asian century will be seriously crippled if China and India don’t find a long-term modus vivendi. Bajpai’s book will help both sides understand each other better.
"Why have relations between India and China, which comprise nearly forty per cent of the world’s population, been troubled for over sixty years? A war in 1962 was followed by decades of uneasy peace, but in recent years a rising number of serious military confrontations has underlined their huge and growing differences. This book examines these differences in four crucial areas: their perceptions and prejudices about each other; their continuing disagreements over the border; their changing partnerships with America and Russia; and the growing power asymmetry between them, which affects all aspects of their relationship. China demands deference as a…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
I've been studying yoga in various forms since my first trip to India in the 1990s. I began as a curious tourist, attending the world's biggest human gathering (the Kumbh Mela). After working as a foreign correspondent—initially for Reuters then The New York Times—I returned to university, earning a master's degree in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation. I've since taught courses at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, on yoga teacher trainings, and via my website. The Truth of Yoga is the book I wish I'd found when I started exploring.
Sometimes fiction speaks truer than facts. This adventure set in India in the 1970s brings to life what it means to balance yogic ideas with a Western mindset. It's a mixture of hippie idealism, academic disillusionment, and searches for meaning as things fall apart. Beautifully written and wise, it evokes the common ground between yoga and Buddhism—particularly on causes of suffering and how to transcend it.
A stunning debut novel on sex, loss, and redemption.
It is 1975 and India is in turmoil. American Stanley Harrington arrives to study Sanskrit philosophy and escape his failing marriage. When he finds himself witness to a violent accident, he begins to question his grip on reality.
Maya introduces us to an entertaining cast of hippies, expats, and Indians of all walks of life. From a hermit hiding in the Himalayan jungle since the days of the British Raj, to an accountant at the Bank of India with a passion for Sanskrit poetry, to the last in a line of…
