One of the most popular travel books available today are the Frommer’s travel guides. Frommer’s helps you explore destinations as if you were a local. It does not matter if you are traveling near or far, it does not matter if you have an expendable budget or a tight budget Frommer’s provides the most reliable information in their travel books.

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger, published in 1959, is a wonderful read. This books cover the territories of Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. This great work spans over the course of Thesiger’s five-year expedition across the region of the Middle East before the time of oil. Wilfred Thesiger writes beautifully about a time and place that are now gone with an insightful admiration of the desert itself to create on of the best travel books of all time.

In 1939, Noel Carrington proposed the idea of a series of non-fiction childrens books to Allen Lane. He liked the idea and thus began Puffin Books and the future of children’s books. The first of the Puffin Books was a story about a man who had broomsticks for arms.

In the beginning, it was difficult for Puffin Books to get up and running. Paper was being rationed due to the ongoing war and the libraries only wanted hardback children’s books. Therefore, the editor of Puffin Books, Eleanor Graham, vowed to turn children on to reading and came up with her own Puffin Books title list.

The fifties was the decade of children’s books, with great Puffin Books like C.S Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden as well as E. B. White’s favored Charlotte’s Web.

Even still to this day, you can rely on Puffin Books for the best children’s books.

The first chapter, “The Mouse That Roared”, zeros in on the growth of the information technology industry of India and its rise from a mere $50 million in the early nineties to an astounding $6 billion just a decade later. The first half of the decade of growth is mostly due to hard work for prime companies from America such as Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments.

In the next chapter, “The Cats That Stalked”, is an outline of Indian information technology professional’s history, such as who was first to come to San Francisco in the early sixties.

In the book, the author selects four superstar Indian-American entrepreneurs from the eighties and nineties and devotes a chapter to each one of them.

However, the statistics and facts are left to the newspapers. With an understanding of the individual personal lives, Amitav Ghosh writes an awe-inspiring human account by combining stories from real survivors from Cambodia who are coping with the past to rebuild their lives.

Each book by Amitav Ghosh is somewhat different from the one before it. In the book Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma, Amitav Ghosh weaves together the political reportage, history, travel and cultural commentary into each other, the result ruminates on pain, power, freedom and violence. More geographies and histories are brought to life in a way to which the reader can relate through this work.

In the chapter titled “Scheduled Castes, Unscheduled Change”, the author tells a story of a childhood friend that grows up to become an officer for the I.A.S. thanks to the affirmative-action program of India. This law holds almost fifty percent of the federal jobs for those in a disadvantaged class.

Shashi Tharoor sees the crimes of politics and corruption of bureaucracy as two of the biggest problems in India. The corruption to bureaucracy is largely due to “the permit-license-quota Raj” led by socialism by Nehru. Nehru himself is not corrupt, but is socialism legacy has fallen under growing attacks recently. In the book, Shashi Tharoor claims that the most harmful phenomenon in the independent political life of India is crime in politics. One of the first people appointed to the present government has close to twenty criminal charges against him that are pending. It is believed that the present defense minister won his appointment by playing to the students and Muslims that want to do away with the laws that prevent them from cheating on exams.

The photographic journey begins in Nepal, the place of birth of Gautama Buddha. John Ortner captures some of the most astounding images of the rustic sanctuaries, streams and mountains. John Ortner reveals his imaginative gift for bringing out the simple yet deep veins of religion that are the definition of this ancient civilization. That is not all; he questions and illustrates the commitment of the readers to the engaging images that reveal his understanding of the land.

After Nepal, the next place John Ortner takes the reader is India. Images of the beauty and reverent crowd of the Kartika Purnima on the Ganges remind the reader that India is not only a centerpiece, but also a masterpiece of the gods that remain primary in the minds and hearts of those who are faithful and is unchanged in the new nuclear world of today. One of the most important pieces in the book is the image of corpses as they are prepared for cremation while others are already wrapped in flames.

David Davidar showcases the historical background throughout his novel. He gives readers and idea of India’s fight for independence from British rule while providing the background to understand the social and political factors that make the lives of his characters so complex. There are times in the book when David Davidar turns from third-person narrator to first-person editor.

In this excellent work of fiction colorfully depicts differences in language, religion, community and caste that have divided the society of India for thousands of years. When India was united by the British in the nineteenth century, they left in tact the essence of India, which by definition is the lack of ability to find common ground among one another. Instead, this flaw was used against the people of India to control them.