Book Review

Articles

• Review of Brockmann, Sophie, The Science of Useful Nature in Central America
  8 April 2022

  Reviewed by Paul Ramirez (Northwestern University) __0__
  The Science of Useful Nature in Central America
  by Sophie Brockmann
  Cambridge University Press 2020. xii + 267 pp. $99.99 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-108-42123-2 __0__
  In 1772, the creole polymath José Antonio Alzate traveled outside of Mexico City to investigate the effects of a typhus outbreak. As he later reported in an issue of his literary journal, his reconnaissance included an interview with a “ladino” resident, who suggested (…)

• When Nationalists Backed ‘Made in India’ | M R Narayan Swamy
  17 December 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Branded in History: Fresh Marketing Lessons from Vintage Brands
  by Ramya Ramamurthy
  Hachette India
  Pages: 309; Price: Rs 499
  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9388322681 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9388322683
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  Did you know that Sunlight soap is as old as the Indian National Congress? The Lever Brothers in the UK made the first ‘vegetarian soap’ by combining vegetable or palm oil with glycerine to create Sunlight in 1885. After all, Indians were averse to imported soaps with animal (…)

• Alam on Siddharth Singh’s The Great Smog of India
  23 April 2021

  Book Review
  by Md Mashhood Alam *
  The Great Smog of India by Siddharth Singh
  2018, 262 | ISBN: 9780670091171
  Penguin Random House India
  Air pollution in India is one of the critical issues that concerns our daily lives. Every winter from October to the last week of December most part of northern India in general and Delhi, in particular, is engulfed under a black smog and haze, what Siddharth Singh calls ‘The Great Smog of India’, largely due to stubble burning in Delhi’s (…)

• Review of Breyfogle & Brown eds., Hydraulic Societies: Water, Power, and Control in East and Central Asian History | Jenia Mukherjee
  7 December 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Hydraulic Societies: Water, Power, and Control in East and Central Asian History
  by Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Philip C. Brown (Editors)
  Oregon State University Press
  2023. x + 249 pp
  (paper) ISBN 978-0-87071-237-1
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  Reviewed by Jenia Mukherjee
  What is water? Is it H2O or bottled profit

• A Book on Forgotten Refugees | Joydip Ghosal
  22 July 2023

  Forgotten Refugees, Two Iraqi Brothers in India
  by Nandita Haksar
  Speaking Tiger Books LLP
  2022
  ISBN- 978-93-5447-311-1 __0__
  Nandita Haksar is an eminent human rights lawyer who has left her own imprint and set a precedent in the arena of human rights law. Apart from that she is a renowned campaigner and teacher. Both in Indian courts and international fields she fought tirelessly for the rights of refugees whether they were internally displaced people or refugees evicted from (…)

• Reclaiming a Revolutionary: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani; Interrogating Historiography | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
  22 May 2021, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra

  BOOK REVIEW
  Geraldine Forbes—Lost Letters and Feminist History—The Political Friendship of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2020.
  review by Deepti Mehrotra *
  Early in 1920, 47-year-old Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and 50-year-old Mohandas K. Gandhi pledged to write each other at least one letter per day. The intensity of their correspondence, and friendship, lasted barely one year. During this time a few hundred letters passed between them, for (…)

• Why Doesn’t India Wage War Against Tax Havens? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  14 October 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW __0__
  Black Money and Tax Havens (Updated Edition) R. Vaidyanathan
  Penguin Books ISBN: 9780143459446 Pages: xvi + 254; Price: Rs. 399 __0__
  This is an authoritative book on tax havens and why the superrich all around the world love them. When it comes to India, two unpleasant conclusions can be drawn. One, the Congress party, whatever it may now say about the Adanis, never showed any serious intent to bring back money stolen from India and stashed away abroad. Equally (…)

• Book Review: Understanding the Nuances of Development
  19 May 2007, by G Narasimha Raghavan

  Development Discourse: Issues and Concerns by T.K. Oommen; Regency Publications, New Delhi; 2004 .
  Back in 1965, Dudley Seers wondered aloud:
  What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? If all three of these have become less severe, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development for the country concerned. If one or two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would (…)

• Mapping India’s Sufi World — With a New Twist | M R Narayan Swamy
  16 December 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  In Search of the Divine:
  Living Histories of Sufism in India
  by Rana Safvi
  Hachette India
  Pages: 415; Price: Rs 599 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9393701113
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  Orthodox Muslims may look down upon Sufism as blasphemy but writer-scholar Rana Safvi asserts that Prophet Muhammud was the first Sufi and the first link of all Sufi orders or silsilas.
  In a claim that could raise the hackles of many Muslims, Safvi says that it is from the Prophet’s own behaviour that Sufis (…)

• Review: No nation for women, reportage on rape from India | Joydip Ghosal
  1 July 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Joydip Ghosal
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  No nation for women, reportage on rape from India, the world’s largest democracy
  by Priyanka Dubey
  Simon & Schuster India 2019 / 320 pages ISBN- 978-93-86797-09-4 __0__
  No nation for women: Reportage on rape from India, the world’s largest democracy is the outcome of an intangible confluence of the private and lived experience of suffering mass. It becomes amply clear that while authoring the book the writer unequivocally empathises with (…)