Book Review

Articles

• Review of Harris’s Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies: Co-operatives, Mutual Aid and Universal Basic Income | Domonkos Sik
  1 June

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies: Co-operatives, Mutual Aid and Universal Basic Income
  by Neal Harris
  Manchester University Press
  2026. 184 pp.,
  ISBN 9781526172228
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  Reviewed by Domonkos Sik
  Neal Harris is taking on a daunting quest: critiquing those emancipatory movements that, by their own definition and according to the mainstream view of Marxist and critical sociology, are supposed to widen the

• Review of Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam | Francis R. Bradley
  9 September 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Francis R. Bradley (Pratt Institute)
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  Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Van Minh and Jazz in Hanoi by Stan BH. Minh Tan-Tangbau
  University Press of Mississippi 2021. 320 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4968-3633-5; (paper), ISBN 978-1-4968-3634-2
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  Stan BH Tan-Tangbau collaborated with saxophonist Quyền Vӑn Minh to write the first major history of jazz in Vietnam. Minh is the central figure in the book’s narrative and he writes (…)

• A Star of Cochin Port Sounds Wake Up Call for Kerala | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  13 September 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Notes from Willingdon Island: The Past, The Present, and The Future of Cochin Port and its Hinterland
  by N. Ramachandran
  Konark
  Pages: xxvi + 334; Price: Rs 900
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  This is a beautiful and straight-from-the-heart account of the Cochin Port

• Review of Lovejoy, Alice, Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War | Joris Mercelis
  22 April

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War
  by Alice Lovejoy
  University of California Press
  2025. Illustrations. 256 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-40293-5
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  Reviewed by Joris Mercelis (Heinrich Heine University D

• Review of Haksar’s Shooting the Sun | KS Subramanian
  12 July 2024, by K S Subramanian

  [fond blanc][noir]BOOK REVIEWnoir]fond blanc]
  Review by KS Subramanian __0__
  Shooting the Sun: Why Manipur was Engulfed by Violence and the Government Remained Silent
  by Nandita Haksar
  Speaking Tiger 2023, Rs 399
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  Prelude
  Manipur was an independent kingdom with a constitution of its own when it was forcibly taken over by India in 1949 in the name of national integration. The resulting resistance and insurgencies are characteristic features of the state. State repression (…)

• Review of Sohal’s The Muslim Secular | Raheel Bashir & Aamir Jamal Khan
  15 February 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India

• Review of India’s National Security Challenges Edited by NN Vohra
  16 December 2023, by K S Subramanian

  Reviewed by KS Subramanian IPS (retd)
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  India’s National Security Challenges Edited by NN Vohra India International Centre, New Delhi Primus Books
  2023 HB ISBN : 978-93-5852-037-8
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  This is a collection of articles on India’s national security, edited by N N Vohra former J& K Governor (2008-18) and Life Trustee of the India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi, devoted to promotion of discussion on national security and similar issues.
  The Covid 19 pandemic had (…)

• Review: Thøgersen on Gasma’s ’Harbin: A cross-cultural biography’
  24 December 2022

  Reviewed by Stig Thøgersen (Aarhus University)
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  Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography
  by Mark Gamsa
  University of Toronto Press
  2022. 394 pp.
  ISBN 978-1-4875-4424-9.
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  This ambitious book runs along three parallel tracks. It tells the history of the city of Harbin in northeastern China; it gives an account of the life of Baron Roger Budberg, a physician with Russian citizenship who spent most of his life in that city; and it discusses, from several angles, the (…)

• Review: Bangalore’s Street-Based Sex Workers - Experiences of Urban Transition | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
  4 November 2022, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra

  BOOK REVIEW
  Review by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
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  Urban Undesirables: City Transition and Street-Based Sex Work in Bangalore By Neethi P. and Anant Kamath
  Cambridge University Press, New Delhi 2022, Pages 211, Hard Bound, Price 895.00 ISBN: 9781009180214 __0__
  This book seeks to redraw the map of Bangalore, based on the experiences of street-based sex workers—so that we begin to see the city through their eyes. Their livelihoods rendered increasingly precarious due to neo-liberal (…)

• Bhavuk’s Review of Nehru’s India by Aditya Mukherjee
  7 December 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Nehru’s India: Past, Present and Future
  by Aditya Mukherjee
  Vintage Books
  Penguin (25 November 2024)
  Hardcover: 208 pages
  ISBN-10 : 0143471953
  ISBN-13 : 978-0143471950
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  Reviewed by Bhavuk
  An Appraisal of Nehru In Our Times
  Seeing the 14th of November pass uneventfully, one felt dejected that Nehru was not being discussed at such a crucial time for Indian democracy. Aditya Mukherjee’s book Nehru’s India: Past, (…)