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10 Indian Languages and How They Came to Be (10s Series)

This book talks about ten Indian languages—of the thousand-odd languages spoken in India—and their evolution, transformation and development. These languages are:

Tamil
Telugu
Brahui
Santali
Khasi
Kokborok
Manipuri
Marathi
Punjabi
Hindi

Karthik Venkatesh traces the long and varied journeys of these languages through time, examining the cultural shifts and political and social influences that have shaped them. He provides a glimpse of their literature, tracks the growth of their scripts and identifies landmark moments that have preserved and reinvented these ten Indian languages.

Zero-Carbon Industry: Transformative Technologies and Policies to Achieve

The power sector and transportation tend to dominate conversations about climate change, but there’s an under-the-radar source of climate pollution that must be addressed: industry.
Globally, industrial activity is responsible for one-third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Though industry is a major emitter, it is essential for producing the tools we need to fight climate change—like wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles—and for meeting our everyday needs. How can industry eliminate its climate pollution while supplying transformational technologies?

This book delivers a first-of-its-kind roadmap for the zero-carbon industrial transition, spotlighting the breakthrough innovations transforming the manufacturing sector and the policies that can accelerate this global shift. Jeffrey Rissman illustrates the scope of the challenge, diving into the workings of heavy polluters like steel, chemicals, plastics, cement, and concrete. He examines ways to affordably decarbonize manufacturing, such as electrifying industrial processes, using hydrogen, deploying carbon capture and storage, and growing material efficiency with lightweighting and 3D printing. But technologies are only part of the picture. Enacting the right policies—including financial incentives, research and development support, well-designed carbon pricing, efficiency and emissions standards, and green public procurement—can spur investment and hasten emissions reductions. Rissman provides a framework to ensure that the transition to clean industry enhances equity, health, and prosperity for communities worldwide.

Engaging and comprehensive, Zero-Carbon Industry is the definitive guide to decarbonizing the vast—yet often overlooked—global industrial sector.

Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet

What would it take to achieve a genuinely food-secure world—one without hunger or malnutrition, where everyone gets to consume the right quantity and quality of food to live a healthy, active, and productive life?
Bringing about such a future requires transforming how our food is grown, managed, and distributed. From production to consumption, food systems must be sustainable, halting environmental degradation and even repairing the damage we have previously done.

This book provides an accessible guide to making healthy diets from sustainable food systems available to all. Glenn Denning bridges the divisive worlds of science, policy, and practice. He synthesizes the most relevant literature and shares personal perspectives and insights gained over four decades working in more than fifty countries, coupled with the real-world experience of hundreds of leading experts. Universal Food Security lays out key priorities—sustainable intensification, market infrastructure, postharvest stewardship, healthy diets, and social protection—and presents how to achieve food systems transformation.

Denning identifies the education and development of practitioner-leaders as the critical trigger of change. Universal Food Security informs and inspires those leaders—acting on their own and with others through institutions—to achieve a food-secure world. This book is an ideal handbook for students and practitioners looking to transform our food systems at all levels.

The Politics of Language

A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language.

In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role.

Drawing on a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech―whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication―is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language―from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality.

At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest.

Supercommunicators

From the bestselling author of The Power of Habit, a fascinating exploration of what makes conversations work—and how we can all learn to be supercommunicators at work and in life

“A winning combination of stories, studies, and guidance that might well transform the worst communicators you know into some of the best.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again and Hidden Potential

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we’re actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What’s this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don’t know what kind of conversation you’re having, you’re unlikely to connect.

Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives—and how we see ourselves, and others—shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.

With his storytelling that takes us from the writers’ room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations—and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.

In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.

We, The Citizens

… the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman

What is a republic? How do markets work? What is the role of society in bringing about change? These may be abstract questions, but they have a concrete impact on all of us.

We, the citizens, live at the intersection of the Indian state, market and society. Yet, many of us are unaware of what these entities stand for, how they interact with each other, and how they touch our lives.

We, The Citizens, by Khyati Pathak, Anupam Manur and Pranay Kotasthane, decodes public policy in the Indian context in a graphical narrative format relatable to readers of all ages. If you want to be an engaged citizen, aspire to be a positive change-maker, or wish to understand our sociopolitical environment, this book is for you.

The idea of India was an audacious dream. The fulfilment of this dream lies upon We, the citizens.

Ma is Scared

An anxious mother waits for her daughter to return from work, while deflecting comments from judgmental neighbours. A chance encounter with an old college friend triggers the memory of a cruel trap once set for a young student, just because of her caste. In the middle of a lecture on the legacies of sexual abuse, a woman feels the weight of a whole lifetime suddenly pressing down on her.

The stories in Anjali Kajal’s debut collection draw us into the lives of ordinary women in Northern India, making us realise quite how rarely we witness these experiences from Dalit points of view.
Whether combating the caste-based disdain of colleagues at work or in the classroom or enduring the new blows that the pandemic landed on Dalit communities, Anjali’s characters find a resilience and a
dignity that we can all learn from.

Mrityunjay

PRESENT DAY, BHARAT
Renowned archaeologist Sudhir Arya dies mysteriously the night before Diwali. His grandson, Vivaan, comes to his hometown to perform the last rites. Here, he gets a phone call that sets him off on a puzzling journey as he discovers thousand-year-old secrets and shocking facts about his identity.
1026 CE, PRABHAS KSHETRA
Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi has attacked the first jyotirlinga of Lord Mahadev: Somnath. Did he seek the temple’s treasures? Or was he looking for a Puranic heirloom of Sanatan Dharma, the mystery of which has been buried under layers of time?
470 CE, ARAB LAND
Yogi Matsyendranath awakens the kundalini energy of his army through the ritual of Aatma Jaagran as it takes on terrifying, evil entities tasked with protecting the greatest mystery of the Kaliyuga.
SATYUGA, ARYAVARTA
Through yagnas, bloody sacrifices and mantras prohibited in the Vedas, Devi Anishtatri, the goddess of malevolence, is invoked. She appears in her most ferocious form and grants a boon so potent it could change the fate of the universe.

What is the link between Aryavarta, Arab Land and Prabhas Kshetra?
What is the vicious boon that threatens to change the fate of the cosmos?
The ultimate battle of Kaliyuga is about to begin . . .

The Rumbling Earth

The renowned seismologists C.P. Rajendran and Kusala Rajendran offer a riveting story of the Indian earthquakes, their science, history and impact. Like all other natural phenomena, earthquakes are part of life-sustaining forces—the creators of the mountains, valleys and springs or even deserts on Earth—a theatre where the show never ends.

The book takes the readers to some exciting parts of India to show how earthquakes change the topography where a sea existed not far in the past—now a salt marsh, affecting the social life, trade and livelihood. The book discusses the likelihood of the next big earthquake in the Himalayas against the backdrop of the devastating earlier ones revealed by archaeology, history and geology. It probes the causes and aftermath of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and gives a glimpse of the past.

The high-impact earthquakes will happen, but they need not always end up as human catastrophes. The authors have spent much of their professional lives studying the earthquakes in India and abroad. They tell us from their vast experience how to negotiate the impacts of earthquakes and related hazards by following science-based strategies.

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