HT Picks; New Reads
This week’s pick of interesting reads includes a dark look at how exploitative people of privilege are in India, the definitive story of one of the country’s most audacious political experiments, and a book that offers answers to the most pressing questions about generational change
A darkly hilarious diagnosis of Indian society
In this searing and darkly hilarious diagnosis of contemporary Indian society, acclaimed writer Manu Joseph explores why the poor don’t rise in revolt against the rich despite living in one of the most unequal regions of the world.
The poor know how much we spend in a single day, on a single meal, the price of Atlantic salmon and avocados. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘do they tolerate it? Why don’t they crawl out from their catastrophes and finish us off? Why don’t little men emerge from manholes and attack the cars? Why don’t the maids, who squat like frogs beside kitchen sinks, pull out the hair of their conscientious madams who never give them a day off? Why is there peace?’
Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us shows us in pitiless detail just how hypocritical and exploitative people of privilege are, and it also shows us how and why they get away with it. It’s a sharp, witty, and perceptive critique of the many faults of the India we live in.*
A fall as swift as the rise
Built on protest, broken by politics How the AAP crashed in the eye of the storm Born out of an anti-corruption uprising that electrified the nation, the Aam Aadmi Party promised to clean up Indian politics and deliver governance rooted in honesty and transparency. Catapulted from protests to power in record time, it stunned the political class with its meteoric rise and landslide victories in Delhi and later in Punjab. But the movement that began with idealism soon found itself mired in controversy. This book traces the AAPs dramatic journey, from its origins in street activism to its crushing defeat in the Delhi elections in 2025. It delves into the power struggles and personality clashes that fractured the partys ethical core, the high-stakes liquor scam, the arrests of top leaders and the political storm around Arvind Kejriwals lavish house renovation. With the BJP using every misstep to tighten the noose, the fall was as swift as the rise. Drawing on insider accounts and sharp political analysis, this is the definitive story of one of India’s most audacious and turbulent political experiments.*
On budding adult neurobiology
Greatly expanding his award-winning New York Times series on the contemporary teen mental-health crisis, Pulitzer Prize–winning science reporter Matt Richtel delivers a groundbreaking investigation into adolescence, the pivotal life stage undergoing profound—and often confounding—transformation.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is a natural, evolution-honed cycle that now faces radical change and challenge. The adolescent brain, sculpted for this transition over eons of evolution, confronts a modern world that creates so much social pressure as to regularly exceed the capacities of the evolving mind. The problem comes as a bombardment of screen-based information pelts the brain just as adolescence is undergoing a second key change: puberty is hitting earlier. The result is a neurological mismatch between an ultra-potent environment and a still-maturing brain that can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. It is a crisis that is part of modern life but can only be truly grasped through a broad, grounded lens of the biology of adolescence itself. Through this lens, Richtel shows us how adolescents can understand themselves, and parents and educators can better help.
For decades, this transition to adulthood has been defined by hormonal shifts that trigger the onset of puberty. But Richtel takes us where science now understands so much of the action is: the brain. A growing body of research that looks for the first time into budding adult neurobiology explains with untold clarity the emergence of the “social brain,” a craving for peer connection, and how the behaviors that follow pave the way for economic and social survival. This period necessarily involves testing — as the adolescent brain is programmed from birth to take risks and explore themselves and their environment — so that they may be able to thrive as they leave the insulated care of childhood.
Richtel, diving deeply into new research and gripping personal stories, offers accessible, scientifically grounded answers to the most pressing questions about generational change. What explains adolescent behaviors, risk-taking, reward-seeking, and the ongoing mental health crisis? How does adolescence shape the future of the species? What is the nature of adolescence itself?*
*All copy from book flap.
