Book Review

Articles

• How the English Built India – Brick by Brick I M R Narayan Swamy
  30 September 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  Empire Building: The Construction of British India 1690-1860
  by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
  Penguin/Viking ISBN: 9780670099689 Pages: xi + 239; Price: Rs 799
  __0__ Yes, the English landed in India purportedly to trade before they began pitting one kingdom against the other amid a crumbling Mughal order to gain lordship over one of the biggest countries in the world. Before the British Raj started ruling India directly after the 1857 War of Independence, it was the East India (…)

• Review: Women’s Labor in Bangladesh
  15 April 2022

  Reviewed by Samita Sen
  __0__ An Empire of Touch: Women’s Political Labor and the Fabrication of East Bengal.
  by Poulomi Saha
  New York: Columbia University Press Gender and Culture Series 2019 | Illustrations. 344 pp. $65.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-231-19208-8. __0__
  The book under review, An Empire of Touch by Poulomi Saha, is organized around three parts. The first part is thematic, what Saha terms a "fabric genealogy," a running thread of textiles, starting with the now-extinct dhakai (…)

• Review of Intondi’s, Saving the World from Nuclear War | Eric Ross
  4 January 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Saving the World from Nuclear War: The June 12, 1982, Disarmament Rally and Beyond
  by Vincent J. Intondi
  Johns Hopkins University Press
  Johns Hopkins Nuclear History and Contemporary Affairs Series
  2023. 152 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-4214-4640-0
  __0__
  Reviewed by Eric Ross (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
  In Saving the World from Nuclear War, Vincent J. Intondi offers a concise yet comprehensive examination of the context (…)

• Emergency Raj to Modi Raj
 - Second Coming of the Nightmare? | Sukla Sen
  9 March 2024, by Sukla Sen

  [blanc][fond noir]BOOK REVIEWfond noir]blanc]
  Keeping Up the Good Fight From the Emergency to the Present Day by Prabir Purkayastha
  LeftWord Books, New Delhi
  2023 230 pages Paperback 978-93-92018-97-8 Ebook 978-93-92018-58-9
  __0__
  The Context


  The rather slim volume, Keeping Up The Good Fight: From The Emergency To The Present Day, by Prabir Purkayastha, having some 230 pages in all – that includes, inter alia, a Foreword and seven sections of the main text plus customary (…)

• The Rise and Fall of Basu Chatterji | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  29 April 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  Basu Chatterji: And Middle-of-the-Road Cinema by Anirudha Bhattacharjee
  Vintage/Penguin Random House Pages: 305; Price: Rs 699 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670096253 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670096251
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  He put his own hard-earned money into the making of his first film, whose story be bought from noted Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav for Rs 21. It was the late 1960s. Sara Akash became a huge success and gave Basu Chatterji not just fame but a standing in the film world that stood by (…)

• Review of Christopher Dole, Living On: Psychiatry and the Future of Disaster in Turkey | Andrew J. Bielecki
  15 November 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Living On: Psychiatry and the Future of Disaster in Turkey
  by Christopher Dole
  Stanford University Press
  2025. 312 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5036-4177-8
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-5036-4251-5
  __0__
  Reviewed by Andrew J. Bielecki (Columbia University)
  What does it mean to live through the end of your world? Across the world, humanity has endured one natural disaster after another, some with truly apocalyptic manifestations. Even (…)

• Kinzley’s Review of Greene, J. Megan, Building a Nation at War
  25 November 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Judd Kinzley (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
  __0__
  Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II
  by J. Megan Greene
  (Harvard East Asian Monographs) Harvard University Asia Center 2022. xiv + 319 pp. ISBN 978-0-674-27831-8 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674278318
  __0__
  During the Anti-Japanese War (1937-45), Nationalist Party planners in China drew up ambitious (…)

• Oppenheim on Lee, Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea
  5 November 2021

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Robert Oppenheim (University of Texas at Austin)
  __0__
  Pop Empires:
  Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea
  by S. Heijin Lee, Monika Mehta, Robert Ji-Song Ku, eds.
  Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press
  2019. 360 pp.
  ISBN 978-0-8248-8000-2. __0__
  The popularity and transnational reach of Indian popular media, most centrally Bollywood and regional Indian cinemas, have been subject to a great deal of academic attention. Somewhat more recently, (…)

• Review: Raghavan on Heinze’s ’The Most Human Right’
  8 July 2022, by G Narasimha Raghavan

  Book Review by G Narasimha Raghavan __0__
  The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech Is Everything by Eric Heinze London: The MIT Press 2002 211 Pages ISBN 9780262046459 (hardcover) $27.95
  __0__
  Interestingly, the visual artist and utopian author, Robert Alan Silverstein’s statement is accurate on its timing: "The evolution of the human rights movement clearly illustrates humanity’s ongoing struggle toward creating a better world." It is struggle, struggle and struggle that the author, (…)

• Karunanidhi’s Rise and Rise — And Fall | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  9 September 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  __0__
  Karunanidhi: A Life
  by A.S. Panneerselvan
  Penguin/Viking
  ISBN: 9780670082940
  Pages: 450
  Price: Rs 699
  __0__
  Who was the real Muthuvel Karunanidhi?
  A statesman and a visionary? A corrupt politician? A strong advocate of federalism? A Tamil chauvinist? Secular to the core? Anti-Hindu? A leader who aided Tamil Nadu’s progress? LTTE’s godfather? Social reformer?
  It would be extremely difficult for anyone to do a political autopsy of one of India’s (…)