Books

In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India

By Edward Luce

Edward Luce, a onetime New Delhi correspondent for The Financial Times, highlights this distinction in his In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (Doubleday), one of the best of the current books on the subcontinent. The author graphically describes the conflicting forces at work, as he visits Infosys’ plush offices in Bangalore, bustling call centers in Mumbai, and impoverished farmers in the state of Uttar Pradesh. He reveals that less than 10% of India’s 470 million workers are employed in the formal economy, while more than 300 million live in squalor in the country’s 680,000 villages. Luce’s vivid anecdotes and trenchant analysis make this volume a pleasure to read.

But if India isn’t your cup of chai, there’s lots more to choose from among the top 10 books of the year as singled out by BusinessWeek reviewers.