Two books on India reviewed by Lawrence Mackin
India
Philip Wilkinson
Dorling Kindersley, €31.99
DK is bringing its guidebook expertise to bear on larger-format volumes that make weighty and handsome additions to any collection. This book is a slab of rich, glossy chapters, with iridescent images of the Indian subcontinent shimmering on the page. Several sections take the reader - or, perhaps more accurately with a book of this format, the finger flipper - on a journey through the country's history, with splendid illustrations and theatrical timelines, before introducing individuals in short, magazine-style articles, again shored up with panels of images.
The landscape and the stunning architecture of the continent run rampant across the pages, with the Taj Mahal given suitably lush treatment and a focus on the building's almost terrifying level of detail. The main fault of this book, though, is that this is an idyllic image of India, and nowhere do the grinding poverty and sprawl of the country's urban centres get much of a foothold. Still, it's a solid and sumptuous, if somewhat airbrushed, work that is well worth a lazy read.
India
Rough Guide, £18.99
And from the aspirational we move swiftly to the purely practical. This is the latest edition of the eminent Rough Guide, crucial given India's breakneck economic development. There is a terrific level of detail in this expansive guide, and the authors seem wisely to have preferred to give space to words rather than to images.
The punchy panels, full of valuable nuggets of background information on everything from the Bhopal gas tragedy to (sort of) Irish tiger-hunter Jim Corbett, are especially satisfying.