Parents in the library: Books 2014/2015

From the early sixteenth century, it was common for British colonizers in India to embarrass the Crown by "turning Turk" or "going native." Few caused greater scandal than James Kirkpatrick, a British resident in the Court of Hyderabad, who converted to Islam and spied on the East India Company in the midst of an affair with Khair un-Nissa, the great-niece of the region's prime minister. White Mogulsis rich with many eccentric characters, from "Hindoo Stuart," who traveled with his own team of Brahmins, to Alexander Gardner, an American whose self-invented costume was showcased by a tartan turban with egret plumes. A remarkable love story set in an exotic and previously unexplored world, White Mogulsis full of secrets, intrigue, espionage, and religious disputes and conjures all the resonance of a great nineteenth-century novel.

Investigates the role honor plays in social reform, discussing moral revolutions from throughout history and arguing that the mobilization of a sense of collective honor may be useful in bringing honor killings to an end.

The gripping saga of one of the world's most devastated countries The Democratic Republic of Congo currently ranks among the world's most failed nation-states, second only to war-torn Somalia. David Van Reybrouck's Congo: The Epic History of a People traces the history of this devastated nation from the beginnings of the slave trade through the arrival of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the ivory and rubber booms, colonization, the struggle for independence, and the three decades of Mobutu's brutal rule.