Richard Crasta, Author

When a young Indian named Mohandas Gandhi went to South Africa as a fortune-hunting lawyer, he, thanks to an inbuilt sense of fairness and justice, refused to back down when slapped on the face with an unfair law: “No blacks and Indians allowed in First Class railway compartments.” The incident changed his life. A rising yuppie lawyer, he was transformed into a freedom fighter heedless of his personal wealth, and interested purely in battling injustice and gaining freedom for oppressed people. I, who am no saint in most aspects of my life, did, over a longer period, come to a certain discovery that changed my literary career and perhaps my life.  I came to America to study and for the freedom to be who I really was.  American universities were spacious, generous, and open-minded. Until I arrived in America, I did not know how to distinguish between good literature and trash; I had read very few of the great works. In America, at two different universities, one of wh...

I cannot remember how many years back a speech moved me the way Malala Yousafzai's did. [A couple of days later, I feel the same.] Like Rosa Parks before her, whose action in refusing to go to the back of the bus changed the course of history, could 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai's speech at the UN today change history? It reminded me of the time when I was 16, and was beginning to participate in debating competitions; while I delivered a few snappy and bold speeches, I could summon up nothing like the eloquence, depth of content, and breadth of vision that Malala Yousafzai displayed in her amazing speech. Almost everything she said was meaningful and important, including her plea for the universal right to free education, which we can ensure with a mere one-tenth of what the world spends on armaments and armies. But what made it even more special for me was that she talked of peace, asking the leaders of the world to stop war and turn their attention to peace, education, to...

Richard Crasta: Editing and Proofreading Services About Me Briefly: I am the author of 12 books, one of which was published in ten countries and in seven languages. I have an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and an MA in Literature from American University, and studied editing at a workshop taught by a senior editor from Little, Brown. I then worked at a New York literary agency for a year, evaluating a wide range of manuscripts and writing detailed content critiques on around 400 different books. In recent years, I have edited romance novels, thrillers, literary novels, NGO reports, and a nonfiction book by a senior professor.  A longtime New Yorker, I have attended more than a dozen International Book Fairs, book industry events, and writing conferences, and have traveled widely and lived in five countries. Please also look up my Linked-in profile and my website . I have, by now, received good reviews from many of my clients, and am currently...

My late father, John Baptist Crasta, whose memoir Eaten by the Japanese: The Memoir of an Unknown Indian Prisoner of War is available on Amazon and elsewhere as an e-book and paperback, here in some old photographs: Will someone please tell me if the man in the first picture pinning a medal on my father's chest is the man who turned out to be Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw? Above is the latest paperback edition of my father's book, and it features a photograph of him autographing the first edition at the age of 87. Thank you! Links: Eaten by the Japanese : http://myBook.to/B004UBFXFC http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50202 http://itunes.apple.com/uk/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11 http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eaten-by-the-japanese-richard-crasta/1100079610?ean=2940011274305 http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Eaten-Japanese-The-Memoir-Unknown...