Book Review

Articles

• Restoring Peace and Democracy in Chhattisgarh: Inherent Message of a Political Memoir
  27 November 2015, by Gabriele Dietrich

  BOOK REVIEW
  Inside Chhattisgarh: A Political Memoir by Ilina Sen; Penguin Books India; 2014; pages: 307; Price: Rs 399.
  This is an extraordinary book, based on an unusual life-journey, rooted in search of solidarity and democratic transformation of society. It is unfortunate that Ilina and Binayak Sen have been in the national and international limelight because of the trumped-up Binayak Sen case and the subsequent “Free Binayak Sen Campaign” which was, of course, very positive. This (…)

• Review of Vijayan’s India vs. RSS – a book against majoritarian agenda | Joydip Ghosal
  20 April 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEW[/blanc][/fond noir]
  In the book India vs RSS by Pinarayi Vijayan asserts that the battle for democratic and secular India against totalitarian RSS is winnable. CPI (M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan is the chief minister of Kerala. He served as Minister of Electric Power and Cooperatives from 1996 to 1998. He was born in Kannur which was the “ground zero of RSS terror.”
  The majoritarian ideology is steeped in hatred and parochialism. Vijayan in this book shows (…)

• IFS Officer Recalls Charms, Challenges | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  22 July 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW __0__
  Indian Foreign Service: Charms and Challenges by T.P. Sreenivasan
  Current Books ISBN : 978-93-5482-615-3 Pages:108 Price: Rs 250 https://ebooks.dcbooks.com/indian-foreign-service-charms-and-challenges
  __0__
  Nawaz Sharif told Inder Kumar Gujral that neither could India give Kashmir to Pakistan nor could Islamabad take it; most Indian expatriates may have their minds in India but do not want to live there; Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta was eased out of office by a (…)

• Review of Monica Liu’s Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides under China’s Global Rise
  23 September 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Hsunhui Tseng (National Cheng Kung University) __0__
  Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides under China’s Global Rise by Monica Liu
  Stanford University Press, 2022. xiii + 239 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5036-3247-9; $28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5036-3373-5
  __0__
  The phenomenon of the mail-order bride has been studied for a long time, with these studies often linking this form of commercialized marriage to women trafficking and the global sex trade. However, (…)

• Review of Kirkwood’s, Endless Intervals: Cinema, Psychology, and Semiotechnics around 1900
  7 October 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Jeff S. Nagy (University of Michigan)
  __0__
  Endless Intervals: Cinema, Psychology, and Semiotechnics around 1900 by Jeffrey West Kirkwood University of Minnesota Press 2022. vii + 235 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5179-1253-6 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5179-1254-3
  __0__
  This isn’t your parents’ history of computing. It would have to be at least your great-grandparents’. Endless Intervals: Cinema, Psychology, and Semiotechnics around 1900 finds a prehistory for digital (…)

• Review of Tripathi and Arun’s edited Volume on Democracy in Trouble | Bharat Dogra
  29 March 2024, by Bharat Dogra

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEW[/blanc][/fond noir]
  These are difficult times for democracy and this book on democracy in Hindi has thus been published at just the right time. Although it is mainly centered on India, it also ventures from time to time to comment on the situation in other parts of the world too.
  Edited by Arun Kumar Tripathi and A.K. Arun, two names very familiar to Hindi readers, this book titled ‘Jantantra ki Jarein’ (‘Roots of Democracy’) has essays by several writers (…)

• Covid-19 Pandemic Drove the Indian Economy on the Brink | Dipak Prakash
  27 February 2021

  Book Review by Dipak Prakash *
  Indian economy’s greatest crisis: Impact of the Coronavirus and the road ahead by Arun Kumar Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 264 pages - Dec 31, 2020
  The author Prof. Arun Kumar (well known for his magnum opus Black Economy in India) has attempted to explain how the widow’s cruse is likely to go empty. He succinctly explained why the insane and ill-conceived policy of the government be held responsible, and more so the Modinomics. Voodoo (…)

• Reading Arundhati Roy Against My Will | Disha
  22 May, by Disha

  For most of my life I have read political writing with a sense of duty rather than desire. I read to stay informed, not to feel changed. The books I encountered often seemed to assume a reader who could absorb weight without needing warmth, and I finished them more knowledgeable, but no more connected to the world they described.
  When I picked up the memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me, I expected the same. I did not expect the book to reach the private interior of my reluctance or alter the (…)

• A Black Woman’s Journey to White House | M R Narayan Swamy
  18 June 2021

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by M R Narayan Swamy
  Becoming
  by Michelle Obama
  published by Viking (an imprint of Penguin Books) ISBN-13:978-0241334140, Pages: 428; Price: Rs 999
  Long before she moved into the opulent White House as the US First Lady, Michelle Obama’s family lived in the poor side of Chicago, one of the few who didn’t own a home. The lack of air-conditioning made the apartment unbearably hot in the afternoons. Michelle, her brother and their parents were packed into less (…)

• Book Review of Anand Teltumbde, The Caste Con Census | Srinivasulu Karli
  24 January, by Karli Srinivasulu

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEW[/blanc][/fond noir]
  __0__
  The Caste Con Census
  by Anand Teltumbde
  Navayana Publishing, New Delhi
  2025
  __0__
  Reviewed by Srinivasulu Karli
  There is a strong association made out in the existing discourse on caste in which caste data collected through the census is shown to be critical to the pursuance of social justice politics. This, of course, is sharply articulated by Rahul Gandhi with the slogan of ’jitni abadi, utna haq’ (rights proportionate (…)