Schooling the national imagination by Shalini Advani, Oxford University Press, Rs 575

How do textbooks define social roles and influence the way people look at themselves and others? Discussing the national education policy, Advani tracks the trajectory of state-produced school textbooks

Amulya Reddy, Citizen Scientist by S Ravi Rajan, Orient Blackswan, Rs 795

Amulya K N Reddy was a crusader for appropriate technology in India. As a researcher, he directed concerns of institutes to technologies for rural India, as a university don he inspired a generation of scientists to work in rural India, and as a Planning Commission member he clamped down on blindly aping the West. This is a festschrift for the scientist who passed away in 2006

The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia