The Calico Buffalo is a celebration of cultural diversity, a timely lesson in these troubling times. Beautiful illustrations complement the text...I wish there were more!

This gem is for anyone who appreciates substance and beauty. It is worth picking up for the language and illustrations alone, but the best part is what it conveys. At first I thought The Calico Buffalo was about being different. It is. But as importantly it is about the power of simple, uncalculating forgiveness. And as if those two important messages weren't enough, a 10-year-old adopted friend of mine to whom I recently gave The Calico Buffalo, revealed another to me. She thanked me for the book that "talks about how someone can look different than their parents." Phew. The Calico Buffalo is rich in every way.

I love this book! It's a beautiful fable which tells such a meaningful tale. So often we can and have become a "Thorn" and this is a great reminder of consequences and lessons. The Calico Buffalo has many important messages about being different, understanding and kindness. The rhyme, illustrations and story are terrific. I highly recommend this book to young and old alike.

I read this a few days back. By the time I finished it, I was breathless. Can you dare to dream this big? If you can, Do read this.

I read this book in 1994. I recently picked up "Dare To Dream" from my collection whilst researching for a training programme. Surprisingly, I came across some of the 'gems' which I had highlighted. One of them read: "The idea was never merely to make money. The compulsion was to think big, and let it happen. The profits would automatically come in." Other thoughts of Mr Rai Bahadur, ".....quality costs money but it also brings in more money.", "...We do it every time." and there are many more sprinkled throughout the book. Though my edition is nearly 8 years old, the business lessons are as current as yesterday. This book is more than a biography, it is a book in business management about the hotel industry in India. Ms Karkaria could update this book and re-launch the book not only as a biography but resource reading in business management!

This is an excellent biography for those who "Dare to Dream". Born on the turn of the century, MS Oberoi, The young boy from Bhaun has come a long way in his 98 years of life. Yet undeterred by age, he is as active as ever. This book tells his story of "From Rags to Riches". Also an excellent book for Students pursuing a degree in Hotel Managment.

This little book is essential for travelers to a country where food is riotously varied, delicious and, to most of us, utterly unfamiliar. It begins with a brief historical survey of the cuisine, citing the contributions of successive immigrant or colonial groups, then slices the other way, with sections on Indonesia's major culinary regions and their specialties and characteristics. Recipes, a listing of US sources for ingredients, then phrases in Indonesian all follow. Two alphabetical listings are the heart of the book: One is of menu items, with brief descriptions and notations; the other is of "foods and flavors" (and utensils, cooking methods and so on), in Indonesian, with English translations or explanations. The whole is thorough, information-packed and mouthwatering.

For a country of 17,000 islands and 670 dialects, and complex traditions, religion and culture, no one-including Indonesians-can claim to know more about Indonesia's traditional food tastes than the authors of Eat Smart in Indonesia. Their guide is the first ever published with in-depth information about the unique and diverse food of Indonesia. -William W. Wongso, culinary educator, president of William F & B Management, Jakarta, Java

The authors have written a series of Eat Smart books that no traveler to foreign countries should be without. Each book covers a separate country--Eat Smart in Turkey, Eat Smart in Brazil, Eat Smart in Indonesia and Eat Smart in Mexico--and is chock full of information that you won't find elsewhere within the covers of one easy-to-carry paperback. Individual chapters cover such topics as the history of the country's cuisine, regional foods, how to shop in the local markets, mail-order sources for suppliers of ingredients, and a collection of recipes for typical dishes found in that country. Especially useful is each book's extensive menu guide, listing menu terms alphabetically in the language of the foreign country, with a description of the dish in English. That section is followed by a chapter titled "Foods & Flavors"--listing the foreign terms for foods, spices, kitchen utensils and cooking techniques, with an English translation/description. These books are well researched, accurate and very informative. Highly recommended. --Sharon Hudgins, editor, Chile Pepper magazine

As a former University of Arizona Hydrology student of Dr. Resnick, I laughed and cried in reading Sol's terrific, engaging insight to practical rural water-resources and community development in India in the late 1950s. Based on my own observations, I confirm that Sol tells it like it was. And in some ways still is. I stayed up the night to read the book to my wife. We shared the joy of Sol's adventure to improve life in rural India by training Indian engineers and working with local people to improve irrigation and drinking-water supplies and to reduce the terrible effects of droughts. I've shared Sol's and Elaine's book with my international development colleagues and my own students. Sol's integrity and ingenuity, and love of people, justice, culture, community, and hydrology come across loud and clear, modestly and humorously. A fine read for anyone interested in people, development, practical hydrology, or India. Reading "Irrigating India" reminded me why I became a hydrologist and taught me more about myself.

Irrigating India: My Five Years As A USAID Advisor is the story of Sol Resnick, a USAID advisor who served faithfully in India from 1952 to 1957, as told in his own worlds to Elaine Minow Resnick. Sol Resnick, a civil and agricultural engineer, worked hard to help make the basic human needs of food and water stable and attainable to a populace that was previously at the bitter mercy of the annual rainfall. He would later look on that time as the best five years of his life. Heartwarming, inspiring, and highly recommended to students of international studies as well as the modern history and agricultural development of India.

A tremendous story told with great warmth and humor. It conveys the struggle to stay healthy, the process of adapting to local cultures, and the overwhelming sense of joy in receiving gratitude from people you help. Sol Resnick is able to find elements of humor and poetic irony in the daily activities and chance occurrences that shaped his life. Irrigating India also provides an absorbing historical perspective on India. Having served in the Peace Corps for three years, the book brought back memories of my own experiences. I highly recommend this book!

If (like me)you've read about the adventures of Jim Corbett in the works of Capstick or other writers and wanted to get a real taste of the man-eater hunter in his own words... then this book is an absolute MUST HAVE.

Corbett was the premier rogue cat exterminator in the first quarter of last century and highly regarded as the best ever. This collection contains his most challenging hunts including The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, The Chowgarh Tigers, and The Thak Man-eater. Corbett personally had over a dozen real life assignments against known man-killers and these stories are the best of the best. His targets were reportedly responsible for over 1500 human deaths and countless injuries. Given the remote locations and the fact that deaths resulting from infection, etc. were not counted, that total can probably be doubled or even tripled.

Corbett, in his writings, takes you right into the jungles of 1920s India and you'd be hard pressed to find a man more familiar with his environment. In reading these stories, you will find that Jim Corbett is not a man out for fame, trophies, or money. In fact, his respect and admiration for the great cats that he hunts goes without question. You find no hatred for these maneaters and in his first words discusses typical reasons these cats turn to human flesh. Its refreshing to see a man in his position with such an objective point of view.

At any rate, these tales are the stuff of legend and should be savored by any person interested in hunting, adventure, or the true history of early 1900s India bush life. If you fall into any of these categories, you will love this collection. Guaranteed!

This book was read nearly 15 years ago.It was one of the most exciting and unforgettable books I have come across and I am still searching for a copy.After reading some reviews of Jim Corbetts other books I am reminded of the same qualities of the man that come through in "Tiger Hunter". His humanity and regard for nature in the twenties was ahead of its time. I recall one part of his book where he uses his small dog held under his arm while walking through a bamboo thicket in search of a tiger,his rifle ready for use in the other arm.His dog would then indicate the position of the tiger by picking up its scent. This book may have been published under a different title in recent years.If any one recognises this perhaps they could let me know.

I have read and re-read and re-read Corbett's stories since I first discovered them as a boy 25 years ago.

The writing is clear, elegant and evocative, bringing to life a long-lost world. Most impressive, though, is Corbett's humility and humanity. He repeatedly put himself at risk to help others, but says very, very, very little about himself in his books.

great guidebook. Describes in detail the good, the bad and the ugly of Nepal. The language section was extremely useful. A few hours spent learning some useful greetings and phrases will pay off tenfold upon arrival in Nepal. Being able to bargain or ask for directions in the native language is a lot of fun and much appreciated, especially since most travellers do not take the time to learn anything more than "Namaste."

This book has given me comfort and a wealth of information about what I would like to do and see in Nepal. Having a well planned trip in advance is smart and this book will probably tell you everything you need to know about anything, and more. Food, health issues, places to stay, sights, special points, etc. Definitely worth the investment.

I just returned from Nepal using this guide. The book was very well-written with lots of practical advice-- everything from how to book an airline to what kind of diahrrea you may have picked up. Very accurate information re. hotels, modes of transportation, etc. Useful vocabulary list.

The four volumes of the Raj Quartet overlap and complement one another, while at the same time forwarding the main storyline of the slow twilight of the British ascendancy in India, always with the rape of a white girl by Indian men as the central lodestone everpresent in the background, the nightmare which is seldom mentioned but which none can drive from their minds. Events occur, are discussed, witnessed as newspaper reports, court documents, interviews, vague recollections from years later, or perceived directly by the main characters. Then the next volume will take two or three steps back into previous events, and these same events will be perceived from another angle, perhaps only as a vague report heard far away across the Indian plain, or witnessed directly by another character, or discussed in detail long after their occurrence over drinks on a verandah. This may at times seem like rehashing, indeed as one reads the four volumes one will be subjected to the account of the rape in the Bibighar Gardens many times over; but what will also become apparent is that additional details, sometimes minor variations in interpretation and sometimes crucial facts, are being added slowly to the events discussed, as though the window to the past were being progressively wiped cleaner and cleaner with successive strokes of Scott's pen. In this way he draws the picture of the last days of the Raj not in a conventional linear fashion, but recursively, and from multiple angles. One gets the clear impression of life in India during the first half of the 20th century as similar in nature: Fragmented, multifaceted, largely dependent upon perspective and experience and never perceived whole or all at once.

Book 4 is the tour-de-force of the series, the longest and the one that covers the greatest distance, emotionally and chronologically. Into the Laytons' social set come Nigel Rowan, an officer in the political branch whom we have met before in Book 2 interrogating Hari Kumar some years after his imprisonment, and Guy Perron, a sergeant in the intelligence service who is "chosen" against his will by Ronald Merrick to serve in his unit. Merrick seems deliberately to surround himself with people who dislike him: Guy Perron, Sarah Layton, and before them Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. Rowan and Perron, incidentally, are former schoolmates of Kumar's at the posh Chillingborough Academy in England. And they're not the only ones: The British in India seem constantly reminded that Kumar symbolizes the insoluble problem of India's Britishness. He's too British for the Indians and too Indian for the British. Perron is an excellent guide through the final days of the Raj, stolid and proper yet inwardly seething with intellectual outrage. An explosive yet sombre climax in 1947 details the very end of the British presence in India, the beginnings of the Hindu-Muslim riots throughout the country, and gives an expansive sense of just how far one has come from the small town of Mayapore and the darkly deserted Bibighar Gardens.

"A Division of the Spoils" is the fourth and final part of Paul Scott's "Raj Quartet". World War Two is drawing to a close, as is the British Raj. However, Ronald Merrick's career is still on the rise much to the irritation of most of those who come into contact with him: Merrick's involvement in the events following the incident in the Bibighar gardens in 1942 hover around him like a persistent ghost.

Scott brings the events of the three previous novels to their resolution, and examines the agonising death throes of British rule in India: the distaste of empire, of India and of the Indians felt by those Britons posted to India during the War; the displacement and disorientation of those Britons actually ruling India; the Muslin/Hindu rifts in the Indian independence movement and the emergence of Pakistan; and the unease of those Indians who found a modus vivendi with the Raj.

Mixed in with this, almost as a paradigm of the difficult birth of the new nation is the after-effect of the capture of Indian troops who fought with the Japanese in Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army - how should the British deal with them, now that the Raj is nearly over? How will those troops be treated by their fellow Indians - as traitors, as freedom fighters?

As with the rest of this series of novels, "A Division of the Spoils" is written with great assurance and sensitivity. Scott uses different narrators to move the story along and departs from a linear narrative to give the reader different views of past events. It's a superb finale to an excellent work.

G Rodgers

A DIVISION OF THE SPOILS by Paul Scott is the last book in his series known as the Raj Quartet. The four books are classics, that have been read and will continue to be read centuries from now as readers attempt to understand what happened during the last days of the British Raj in India. I read history but I am also a great fan of well written historical fiction and these books are extremely well written historical fiction. Having read them, I am much more enlightened about the struggles which continue today betweem Hindu and Muslim.

Many of the characters from the earlier books converge in DIVISION, and the book introduces a new character, Guy Perron, who is a Chillingborough-Cambridge educated historian whose "period" and place are mid-19th Century India. Guy's character is used to tie up all the loose ends.

After arriving in India as a British army sergeant (he has elected not become an officer although his education and class clearly warrent it), Guy has the misfortune to be "chosen" by the recently-promoted-to-LtCol. and very wicked Ronald Merrick as his aide-de-camp. Merrick is still riddled with class envy, and sees in Guy an excellent opportunity to abuse someone he despises. Fortunately, Guy is able to escape from Merrick through the graces of his Aunt Charlotte who pulls strings to have him released from the army.

Fortunately for Guy, he doesn't escape Merrick before he meets Sarah Layton. Their story is told in this fourth volume and certain elements of the tale bring to mind the earlier story of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners. In fact, it is through Guy's meeting of Merrick, Sarah, and another Chillingburrian, Nigel Rowan (who interviewed Hari Kumar in prison) that he becomes interested in the events at Mayapore in 1942 and the subsequent consequences for all involved.

As with other great classics, in DIVISION things do not always evolve as the reader would have wished. This book is very realistic -- sorrow and joy are mixed. In JEWEL IN THE CROWN, the first book in the series, Lady Chatterjee says she does not want to go to a heaven that excludes joy and sorrow because being human requires one to feel joy and sorrow.

Perhaps it is because humans can experience sorrow they are capable of experiencing joy. In the end, the reader discovers Hari Kumar's fate and the identity of Philoctetes as well as the difference between Dharma and Karma. This is a powerful series and a fabulous ending to the tale.

This rip-roaring, old-fashioned saga is plot-based from beginning to end, a novel which quickly engages the reader with its excitement and never lets up. Set from 1949 to 1950, with an epilogue which brings the characters up to date in 2001, the novel uses the political tensions of the mountainous area where Kashmir, the Soviet Union, Outer Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan, and China converge as the catalyst for the action. Aidan Shaw, a Chinese/American journalist with Socialist/Communist leanings, disappears while on a story, and his wife and young son find themselves at the mercy of consulates, embassies, and intelligence services, none of which can give adequate information as to his fate.

Packing up her young son, Aidan' wife Joanna goes to Srinagar in search of information. Lawrence Malcolm, the Australian friend whose "hot tip" to Aidan inspired him to undertake his journey, accompanies her, bringing along Kamla, a street child Joanna has "rescued" and whose original home may have been the mountains through which they are traveling. Kamla's story parallels that of Joanna. Her first person account of life on the streets of Delhi and her "rescue" by Joanna broaden the scope and show the contrasts between those who hold the life of one individual to be paramount, such as Joanna, and those for whom survival is such a struggle that soft feelings, or "impossible goodness" are regarded as a weakness.

Coincidence plays a big role in this romantic, and at times melodramatic, novel, which uses the search for Aidan as the vehicle through which the plot progresses. The action moves from Delhi to Srinagar and the mountains around Sinkiang, and eventually includes Hong Kong, Calcutta, Milwaukee, and Washington. Liu keeps the pace moving smartly, with important details revealed at each location so that the search for Aidan never flags.

As in any plot-driven novel, we learn only as much about the characters as we need to know: the author does not dwell on psychological motivations. Aidan remains a cipher, and Joanna's transformation from idealist to more self-absorbed pragmatist is not explained in any detail. Of greater consequence is the author's belief that "Truth, in the end, requires...fact, illusion, faith--alone each is equally incomplete." The conclusion, which mirrors this belief, destroys the reader's own illusions as the facts unfold, and it is not one in which everything is resolved as the reader might expect or hope. Ultimately, what matters most, according to Kamla is not right or wrong. "It was not politics or fidelity or even understanding...It was simply our mutual ineptitude at love." For readers who believe that fidelity and understanding should be paramount values, the ending will be a surprise, and perhaps not a welcome one. Book clubs should have fun analyzing the author's choice of ending. Mary Whipple

Upon finishing Flash House I immediately mailed it to a friend who is in a very good Book Club. Unfortunately, I am new to my area and have no one locally to discuss the book with and I need to discuss this book. It is a novel that invites dialogue. The historical element and insights were new to me. Thus, this novel opened up a new frontier starting with the "Great Game".
But it was the ending of the book that brought about my need for discussion. Any book, article, or speech that invokes or almost demands discussion is 5 stars. So, here I am awaiting my friend's reading so we can have a discussion as to the "whys" that are rumbling around in my head.

I was hooked on the first page of Aimee Liu's Flash House. Reading it was a delicious adventure. I raced through chapters pulled by the gripping story, and with equal pleasure, slowed to savor the lush and intimate descriptions of India, Kashmir and China. This is a great "read", as well as a fascinating introduction to recent history being played out in today's headlines.
If Ms. Liu had written merely about the political changes and struggles of post W.W.II South Asia, the book would be both compelling and relevant. But in addition, Liu adds the emotional drama of four characters, each of whom has suffered a profound family loss, including, surprisingly, international adoption. As an adoptive parent, I found Liu's sense of the culture clash between adoptee and parent accurate, and a fascinating metaphor for the larger geo-political situation she describes.

If you're a vegetarian, a few Indian recipes are a great thing to have in your culinary repertoire, and this book has some tasty and easy to make dishes that are nutritious, aromatic, nice to look at, and even better to eat.
Even if you don't like Indian cuisine, you'll get a lot out of the rice and lentil (dal) chapters. It gives a tremendous amount of information on both these items, their many different types, and how to cook them to perfection.

The "Dal-Based Dishes" is a superb chapter, and one can even "mix and match" these recipes and come up with a delightful side dish.
Other good chapters are "Snacks" (oh ! those heavenly samosas !), and the many pages of veggie recipes...you'll also get a lot of info on spices and ingredients.
Most of the spices and ingredients are available in any good supermarket, although if you're lucky to live in an area with an Indian market, you'll find the same items, usually for a fraction of the cost.
I have the 1972 hardcover edition to this book, and though the chapters have been moved about, the contents in this edition are almost the same. With all my many moves, I don't have a lot of cookbooks, but this one will always be a keeper.

This is the best Indian cook book ever! It's packed with information, yet not overwhelming. Every recipe is perfect and dances with flavor in your mouth.

This is my second edition of Flavors of India. Over the years, I have made nearly all of the recipes and have found them, without exception, to be delicious, usually low in fat, and always very easy for the American cook. Whether you are an expert in cooking Indian foods or just beginning to experiment with this cuisine, you will love this book. It is one I personally could not do without.

I think this a really good book for Indians or any immigrant group who has recently traveled to the US. It shows the life in the US and how people live here. i realli liked this book ad i suggestest everyone read it even though there is alotta sex related things in it!

You can hardly call her a "Indian women writer" that seems too narrow. She writes boldly and assumes roles that only a cosummate writer can do. Her Middleman story set the stage and then each story just got better. Forget Divakurani whose books are overarated, if you want to read "Indian women writers", then Bharti Mukherjee has no equal in this genre. She is astounding, fresh, and tanscends her category.

I read this book and the Interpreter of Maladies back to back and though there are similarities as to subject they are very different writers. Mukherjee's story's snap and pop while Lahiri's sparkle. These are great stories about being in a new place told from various viewpoints. My favorite was about a Catholic woman introducing her Afghan botfriend to her parents at thanksgiving. It was uncomfrtably like being there. Enjoy!