Book Review

Articles

• Dwindling Loyalty of India
  9 August 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc] fond noir]
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  Secession of the Successful: The Flight out of New India
  by Sanjaya Baru
  Penguin/Viking
  Pages: xxix + 289
  Price: Rs 799

• Elephants face an elephantine problem | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  22 April 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW by M.R. Narayan Swamy
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  Trumpet Calls:
  Epic Tales of Extraordinary Elephants
  Nalini Ramachandran
  Hachette India
  Pages: 242; Price: Rs 350
  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 939102890X ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9391028909 __0__
  Elephants have been caught and tamed from as early in history as 6000 BCE. And the practice of training them to fight in wars began in India around 1000 BCE. So many were trained to fight with deadly effect that King (…)

• Lotz on John Bellamy Foster’s The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology
  26 March 2021

  John Bellamy Foster The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology
  Monthly Review Press, New York, 2020. 687 pp., £30 hb ISBN 9781583678367
  Reviewed by Corinna Lotz
  [Corinna Lotz’ book Finding Evald Ilyenkov – How a Soviet Philosopher who stood up for dialectics continues to inspire, was published by Real Democracy Movement in April 2019. She co-ordinates International Friends of Ilyenkov. Info@realdemocracymovement.org]
  More
  For too long it has been a cliché that a class-based (…)

• How Erdogan Turned Turkey into a Fiefdom | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  25 August, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW From Life Itself Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan
  by Suzy Hansen
  Profile Books When you read a political biography of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you feel you are discovering modern-day dictators around the world. It is not a surprise that he once boasted: “Now there are only two experienced leaders in the world. They are myself and Vladimir Putin.”
  American journalist Suzy Hansen also puts Erdogan in the same bracket as Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping – men who insist on (…)

• Ghoshal’s review of Who Killed Moosewala? by Jupinderjit Singh
  5 January 2024

  REVIEW
  by Joydip Ghosal
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  Who Killed Moosewala? by Jupinderjit Singh
  Westland Non-fiction 2023 195 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9357764615 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9357764612
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  Jupinderjit Singh’s book Who Killed Moosewala ? The Spiralling Story of Violence in Punjab laid bare the different aspects of violence that tormented Punjab for a long time. The author delved deeper into the social and political realties to peel off the layers in order to unearth the menace that shoved a bright (…)

• Mapping India
  15 November 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  The Golden Road:
  How Ancient India Transformed the World
  by William Dalrymple
  Bloomsbury
  483; Price: Not given
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  When someone speaks about ancient India

• 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 (…)

• God’s shadow over Mizoram peace | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  15 August, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  From Guerrilla Fighter to Chief Minister: A Memoir by Zoramthanga
  Penguin/Eight; Pages: xvi + 443; Price: Rs 599 In an age when politicians take credit for everything they do even while spending the tax payers’ money, it is heartening to see a guerrilla-turned-political leader give full marks to God for turning Mizoram from one of the most disturbed regions into India’s most peaceful state.
  Zoramthanga, a pioneer of the once feared Mizo National Front (MNF) who was later (…)

• A Legendary Conservationist
  2 August 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Snakes, Drugs and Rock

• A Candid Autobiography of a Chief Minister | Joydip Ghosal
  7 June 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  One Among You - Vol 1 The Autobiography of M.K Stalin
  (Translated by A.S Panneerselvan)
  Penguin Viking
  2023 | 152 pages
  ISBN-9780670098361
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  ‘One Among You’, The Autobiography of M.K. Stalin is about the first twenty- three years of his life. In the introduction the author says that it is always a pleasure to reflect on the path one has travelled and recollect the past. Everyone’s face glows when we delve deeper into (…)