Former president Ram Nath Kovind’s memoir, offering a behind-the-scenes account of his years at Rashtrapati Bhavan, leads Rupa Publications India’s line-up of 12 new books for August.
Titled Triumph of the Indian Republic: My Life, My Struggles, the book traces Kovind’s journey from Paraunkh village in Uttar Pradesh to the country’s highest constitutional office. It covers his early political aspirations, two terms in the Rajya Sabha, tenure as Bihar governor and election as India’s 14th president.
According to the publisher, Kovind also reflects on major developments during his five-year presidency, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the imposition of President’s rule in Maharashtra and key aspects of Indian politics and international diplomacy. The 400-page memoir is priced at ₹795.
Also part of the list is an updated edition of Pathbreakers: How 10 Visionary Leaders Transformed India by veteran financial journalists Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu. The book features new interviews with Mukesh Ambani, K.V. Kamath, Deepak Parekh, Uday Kotak, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Satish Magar and Rajkumar Hirani, while revisiting earlier conversations with Ratan Tata, Amitabh Bachchan and R.H. Patil.
The interviews cover subjects ranging from Ambani’s succession plans for Reliance and Kotak’s legal challenge against the Reserve Bank of India to Hirani’s assessment of storytelling in the age of artificial intelligence.
The Golden Chisel: The Story Behind the Making of Ram Lalla, written by journalists Seethalakshmi S. and Rahul Nandan, recounts sculptor Arun Yogiraj’s nine-month journey to create the Ram Lalla idol consecrated at the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya in January 2024. It also looks at Yogiraj’s earlier works, including the statues of Adi Shankaracharya at Kedarnath and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at India Gate.
Technology, artificial intelligence and corporate leadership are prominent themes across several titles. In Power of UncertAInty, Anand Venkatanarayanan and Srinath Sridharan examine how AI, data, digital infrastructure and financial systems are redefining national sovereignty. Sridharan has also co-authored Everything Starts at the Top with Agamjeet Dang, focusing on boardroom governance, succession planning, digital risks and institutional resilience.
Niladri Roy’s Fault Lines explores the hidden vulnerabilities that leave businesses exposed to disruption, while Unboxing India by Dr Joseph K. Thomas examines India’s economic rise, technological progress and continuing social and economic inequalities.
The list also includes Swami Mukundananda’s The Complete Science of Meditation, Srinath Sridharan’s Grief, Manjula Pooja Shroff’s DHI Alchemy, Vandana Gupta’s memoir Realistically Possible and Sunil Mehta’s debut novel The Compass, which follows four students on a journey through the lives of Albert Einstein, Robert Noyce and Steve Jobs.