ME & MY SHELF

Srinath Raghavan is the author of several books on the history of modern South Asia, including most recently, Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India.

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He won the Infosys Prize for social sciences in 2015. He teaches at Ashoka University.

In an Antique Land BY AMITAV GHOSH, Penguin, ₹399 A brilliant, unclassifiable blend of Ghosh's anthropological work in Egypt and his dogged archival research on the life of a 12th-century Jewish merchant and his Indian slave—all rendered in a narrative of enticing clarity.

Making of the Atomic Bomb BY RICHARD RHODES, Simon & Schuster, ₹834 I first read this book at the age of 14—I still find it enthralling. Rhodes is not a historian, but the depth of his research and the vigour of his prose has made this the standard narrative history not just of the Manhattan Project but of the development of atomic physics in the first half of the 20th century.