Few people have had such a profound influence on the course of history as has the last President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) -- Mikhail Gorbachev. The West has gloried him. The residual elements of the East have castigated and deplored the cascading effect of administrative destruction that he triggered off with his ideas, convictions and efforts. There are three sides to this story -- the West's, the East's and that of the man concerned, says Subir Ghosh.

When will someone write a book about normal middle and upper middle class life in India, about the fun you have in school, in college, in professional situations, and sometimes even at work? That there are people who are content and successful and not criminal and fat and paunchy with beaded eyes and greasy hands. And though you can never wipe away the backdrop of poverty and disaster, not everyone leads these lives. Do poverty, filth and decay have to be our only export? asks MFM.

When history is no more a deduction of facts, but a speculative exercise, however fantastic it may seem, the result is what you have in the quasi-fictional 'What If'. Robert Cowley, the founding editor of the award-winning MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, expanded the idea of a compilation of counterfactual essays from tenth anniversary issue of the magazine, writes Gene Evans.

Indigenous to Asia, even a century ago some 100,000 tigers roamed throughout the continent, from the sub-Arctic north to the equatorial tropics. Today, only an estimated 5,000 or so remain - a 95 per cent population drop over seven generations. Of the eight known subspecies of the tiger, three had been extinct by 1979. Three more are condemned achieve extinction soon. The Royal Bengal tiger of India and the Siberian tiger of the Russian Far East stand any chance of survival, asserts Gene Evans.

Edited jointly by Martin Banham, James Gibbs and Femi Osofisan, African Theatre in Development is a valuable resource material for anyone interested in issues pertaining to theatre and development in Africa. The book is in four sections. The first section contains 10 essays on workshops, seminars and reflections of theatre in development in certain African countries, says James Warder.