Book Review

Articles

• Kimberley Peters. Review of Rachael Squire, Undersea Geopolitics: Sealab, Science, and the Cold War
  14 September 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Undersea Geopolitics: Sealab, Science, and the Cold War. Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds
  by Rachael Squire
  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
  2021. 180 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78660-730-0.
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  Reviewed by Kimberley Peters
  In a recent work-related exchange with a colleague, it was mentioned that many students in the classroom today, in 2024

• 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 (…)

• Review: Ramesh on Dewan’s Misreading the Bengal Delta
  12 November 2022

  Book reveiw by Aditya Ramesh*
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  Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh
  by Camelia Dewan
  University of Washington Press 2021. Illustrations, maps, tables. 254 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-0-295-74960-0; $30.00 (paper) ISBN 978-0-295-74961-7.
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  Frequent headlines emanating from South Asia on extreme weather events are now unmissable, for example, Pakistan’s devastating floods, with some sources estimating a third of the (…)

• Review of Ali, Saleem H., Soil to Foil: Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability | Andrew Perchard
  8 March 2025

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  Soil to Foil: Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability
  by Saleem H. Ali
  Columbia University Press
  2023. 320 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-20448-4
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  Reviewed by Andrew Perchard (University of Otago)
  Saleem Ali takes aluminum as the subject of his book, Soil to Foil. Ali

• Sweeping Western Sanctions Fail to Cripple Putin | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  2 November 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

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  Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring down Russia
  by Stephanie Baker
  Mudlark
  Pages: xiv + 351; Price: Rs 699
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  When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it heralded the largest land war in Europe since World War II. But there was no way the West was going to go for a direct military confrontation with a country with more nuclear warheads than any other. That would have been (…)

• Who Will Dominate the World? Democrats or Dictators? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  25 March 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

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  Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman by Charles Dunst Hodder & Stoughton Pages: 428; Price: Rs 799
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  A world increasingly in turmoil is locked in a bitter battle of ideas: democracy versus autocracy. There was a time when it seemed that democracy would simply overwhelm the world barring isolated spots. No more. As international affairs specialist and author Charles Dunst points out, autocracies and dictatorships of (…)

• Vincenzo Colaprice. Review of Koivunen, Pia, Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy
  8 March

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  Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy
  by Pia Koivunen
  De Gruyter Oldenbourg
  2023. Illustrations. 303 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-3-11-075844-3;
  Free (open access), ISBN 978-3-11-076116-0
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  Reviewed by Vincenzo Colaprice (University of Turin)
  Youth Festivals and Soviet Diplomacy
  On December 24, 2025, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) issued a call to (…)

• The Parasol Women of Kerala | Papri Sri Raman
  7 December 2024, by Papri Sen Sri Raman

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Revolution Within
  Nampudiri Women as Agents of Social Reform in Kerala
  by T K Anandi
  Tulika Books
  2024, 200 pages
  Hardcover ISBN 978-81-958394-8-3
  Price: Rs 850
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  THIS IS A story of lost agency. A story of the shadows under the lamp. Painstakingly crafted by T K Anandi, a meticulous gender researcher, now a consultant to Kerala

• Economic growth is fuelling climate change – a new book proposes ‘degrowth communism’ as the solution | Timothée Parrique
  18 March 2023

  by Timothée Parrique
  March 3, 2023
  I’m often told that degrowth, the planned downscaling of production and consumption to reduce the pressure on Earth’s ecosystems, is a tough sell. But a 36-year-old associate professor at Tokyo University has made a name for himself arguing that “degrowth communism” could halt the escalating climate emergency.
  Kohei Saito, the bestselling author of Capital in the Anthropocene, is back with a new book: Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of (…)

• Review of Hari Singh’s Looking Back with Delight | Subramanian
  12 January 2024, by K S Subramanian

  Reviewed by KS Subramanian
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  Looking Back with Delight: A Memoir by Hari Singh
  Solicitor and Notary Public, England and Wales (Academy of Business Studies, New Delhi)
  pp 320 Price Rs. 890 $ 20.99
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  This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary personality who is solicitor and notary public in the UK and the Wales. The book tells his life experience in India, his land of birth and the UK his land of professional experience as a civil servant, legal luminary and (…)