This original contribution to Indian history, focusing oncontemporary and largely indigenous documents, introduces a set ofconcepts for the analysis of late Mughal rule. More specifically itexamines the origins and development of the Maratha svardjya or'self-rule' within the context of declining Muslim power. It tracesthe expansion of Maratha dominion to a process of fitna, a policyof 'shifting alliances' which was recurrent in the wake of Muslimexpansion throughout its history. The book gives an interestingperspective on Hindu-Muslim relationships in the pre-British periodas well as on the nature of the Indo-Muslim state and its mostimportant successor polity, on its capacity for change anddevelopment in the intermediate sections of society, theland-tenurial system, the monetization of the economy, and on thefiscal system.

Hiroshima is the story of six human beings who lived throughthe greatest single manmade disaster in history. With what BruceBliven called "the simplicity of genius," John Hersey tells whatthese six -- a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, aMethodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest-- were doing at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima wasdestroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. Then hefollows the course of their lives hour by hour, day by day.