on a somewhat related note, at work, my boss, who's Indian, was saying how much she liked Thomas Friedman. I kind of stepped in it when I said that I didn't like him and particularly didn't care for his subtext which is something like, "Omigod! India is going to become a Great Power and the u.s. will end up being an also ran like the British Empire. Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! We must stop this!" I mean, she wasn't angry with me, but I did that thing you can do as a lefty and say something that's common thinking to us that turns out not to be very common to most folks. It makes people feel like dupes. In this case, exposing that subtext in Friedman reveals that his compliments about India aren't really compliments at all and it can make you feel duped if you'd once thought they were.
I was cruising the new book shelf at the library one day and there's a book out there by some guy who bills himself as an Important Indian Millionaire Philosopher. It was on the same note as Friedman, about why India is a rising power, yada yada. He has short, snappy chapters that supposedly provide rundowns of basic history and, as much as one can possibly say, cultural trends such as the habit, he claims, that Indian workers have of multi-tasking far more than even someone like me does. (Bitch Multitask: brush your teeth while polishing knobs...I mean the bathroom fixtures. Which is why I'm a gay man at heart....)
Otherwise, I will take ravi up on the recommendations too. Thanks ravi!