Book Review

Articles

• Review of ‘The Right Wing Mirror of Critical Theory by Larry Alan Busk | Matt McManus
  11 May 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Right Wing Mirror of Critical Theory:
  Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Strauss and Rand
  by Larry Alan Busk Rowman and Littlefield 2023. 276 pp. hb ISBN 9781666929638
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  Reviewed by Matt McManus
  For many decades now, anti-foundationalism has been a very popular position on the academic left. Influenced by an array of post-structuralist and post-modern thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida and Gayatri Spivak, many have argued (…)

• The Looming Shadow of the 1866 Famine in Orissa | Suranjita Ray
  29 April 2023, by Suranjita Ray

  A Haunting Tragedy Gender, Caste and Class in the 1866 Famine of Orissa by Bidyut Mohanty ascertains understanding famine as a process to comprehend who starved during the famine and why. The book engages the reader in understanding the Orissa Famine in 1866 that had its worst impact on the poor, in particular the agricultural labourers, weavers, salt workers and fisher folks, invariably belonging to the lower castes who were marginalised and deprived. The growing consciousness of the (…)

• Review of Takahashi’s Fukushima Futures | James W. Seabrooke III
  5 July 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape by Satsuki Takahashi
  University of Washington Press 2023. 194 pp ISBN 978-0-295-75134-4
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  Reviewed by James W. Seabrooke III
  Environmental Futurism and an Ethnography of Fishermen in the Joban Seascape
  Views of a sustainable future can become quickly obfuscated and disjointed for coastal communities when they are affected by life- and society-disrupting (…)

• The Art of Collecting Priceless Books | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  8 April 2023

  BOOK REVIEW The Book Beautiful: A Memoir of Collecting Rare and Fine Books
  by Pradeep Sebastian
  Hachette India Pages: 306; Price: Rs 699
  Bengaluru-based Pradeep Sebastian would have remained a simple bibliophile who venerated bookshops all his life until he began came across books the likes of which he had never seen or handled earlier. And so was born, around 2015, a no-doubt costly but immensely satisfying hobby of chasing and collecting rare and fine books in a (…)

• How Western Generosity Helped Stalin Crush Hitler | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  24 August 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War by Giles Milton
  John Murray (Hachette India) May 2024 Pages: ix + 372; Price: Rs 999 ISBN: 978-1529398519
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  There can be no doubt that steely and raw courage proved the tripping point in the beleaguered Soviet Union’s near impossible military triumph over Germany in World War II. At a time when it was widely feared that Hitler would overrun Moscow after having (…)

• Michael Degani Review of Mohsin’s, Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development
  19 October 2024

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development
  by Anto Mohsin
  University of Wisconsin Press
  2023. xvii + 245 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-0-299-34540-2
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  Reviewed by Michael Degani (University of Cambridge)
  By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Indonesia

• Chatterjee on Creativity from the Periphery by Deepanwita Dasgupta
  22 July 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Animesh Chatterjee (Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger)
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  Creativity from the Periphery: Trading Zones of Scientific Exchange in Colonial India
  by Deepanwita Dasgupta
  University of Pittsburgh Press 2021. 312 pp. (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8229-8802-1 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4656-4.
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  Outlining her arguments, Deepanwita Dasgupta writes that the purpose of Creativity from the Periphery: Trading Zones of (…)

• Will the Sun Shine Again in Manipur? | Arup Kumar Sen
  22 June 2024, by Arup Kumar Sen

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Shooting the Sun: Why Manipur Was Engulfed by Violence and the Government Remained Silent
  by Nandita Haksar
  Speaking tiger (5 January 2024) Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354477011 | ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9354477010
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  Manipur is burning with hate and violence since May 2023. We the outsiders do not know what triggered this vicious cycle of violence. Nandita Haksar’s recently published book, Shooting the Sun: Why (…)

• Freeman’s Review of Elizabeth Flock. The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice
  4 May 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  Reviewed by Jo Freeman
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  The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice by Elizabeth Flock
  Harper 2024. 293 pp. ISBN: 9780063048805 ISBN 10: 0063048809
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  Women Who Fight Back
  The author’s quest to find women who fought back began when she was raped by a tour guide in Rome after he slipped her a sedative. She did not report the incident because she did not think anyone would believe her. But it consumed her thoughts for decades, (…)

• Book Review: Rowe-McCulloch on Enstad, ’Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II’
  5 December 2020

  Johannes D. Enstad. Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 272 pp. $99.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-108-42126-3; $32.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-108-43166-8.
  Reviewed by Maris Rowe-McCulloch (University of Regina) Published on H-Russia (July, 2020) Commissioned by Oleksa Drachewych (Western University)
  Johannes Enstad’s Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II is a history of the (…)