Book Review

Articles

• 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
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  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
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  Karunanidhi: A Life
  by A.S. Panneerselvan
  Penguin/Viking
  ISBN: 9780670082940
  Pages: 450
  Price: Rs 699
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  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 (…)

• Hao Chen Review of Price’s Cold War Deceptions
  21 September 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Cold War Deceptions:
  The Asia Foundation and the CIA
  by David H. Price
  University of Washington Press
  2024. 358 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-0-295-75224-2
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  Reviewed by Hao Chen (Dartmouth College)
  In his most recent book, Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA, anthropologist and historian David H. Price offers one of the most comprehensive accounts that examines the covert operation and financial maneuvering (…)

• Covid-19 Pandemic Drove the Indian Economy on the Brink | Dipak Prakash
  27 February 2021

  Book Review by Dipak Prakash *
  Indian economy’s greatest crisis: Impact of the Coronavirus and the road ahead by Arun Kumar Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 264 pages - Dec 31, 2020
  The author Prof. Arun Kumar (well known for his magnum opus Black Economy in India) has attempted to explain how the widow’s cruse is likely to go empty. He succinctly explained why the insane and ill-conceived policy of the government be held responsible, and more so the Modinomics. Voodoo (…)

• Review of Leach, Melissa; Fairhead, James, Naturekind: Language, Culture and Power Beyond the Human | Louise Westling
  10 April

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  Naturekind:
  Language, Culture and Power Beyond the Human
  by Melissa Leach, James Fairhead
  Princeton University Press
  2025. 272 pp.
  (paper) ISBN 978-0-691-27066-1
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  Reviewed by Louise Westling (University of Oregon)
  Melissa Leach and James Fairhead offer a bold new perspective of

• Review: Bangalore’s Street-Based Sex Workers - Experiences of Urban Transition | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
  4 November 2022, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra

  BOOK REVIEW
  Review by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
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  Urban Undesirables: City Transition and Street-Based Sex Work in Bangalore By Neethi P. and Anant Kamath
  Cambridge University Press, New Delhi 2022, Pages 211, Hard Bound, Price 895.00 ISBN: 9781009180214 __0__
  This book seeks to redraw the map of Bangalore, based on the experiences of street-based sex workers—so that we begin to see the city through their eyes. Their livelihoods rendered increasingly precarious due to neo-liberal (…)

• Review of Timothy Lorek’s Timothy, Making the Green Revolution: Agriculture and Conflict in Colombia | Javier Puente
  14 June 2024

  BOOK REVIEW
  Review by Javier Puente
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  Making the Green Revolution: Agriculture and Conflict in Colombia. Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges by Timothy Lorek
  University of North Carolina Press 2023. xxii + 317 pp (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-7382-0
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  In September 2016, Colombia’s government and the leadership of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) achieved the unthinkable. After a four-year series of conversations and negotiations, President Juan Manuel Santos (…)

• "Post-Post modernist" theory of "Cohesive development through Alternative development paradigm | Bharat Patankar
  18 October 2025

  It was a very great experience to read Prof. Sunil Ray’s upcoming book. In fact, at many instances while I was reading, I thought as if I am reading my own writing on the "Alternative development paradigm "!! This was particularly true when I was reading the beginning of the Part III which says,
  "The primary condition for cohesive development is social cohesion among individuals with a sense of community and commitment to the common objective based on collective understanding and shared (…)

• Review of Becker & other’s Transnational Communism across the Americas | Thomas Field
  24 February 2024

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  Transnational Communism across the Americas by Marc Becker, Margaret Power, Tony Wood, and Jacob A. Zumoff
  University of Illinois Press 2023. 288 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-04522-6 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-08736-3
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  Despite its title, which hints at an expansive pretense, Transnational Communism across the Americas succeeds in a focused goal: better understanding the role of orthodox, Moscow-backed Communism in Latin America (…)

• Review of Sohal’s The Muslim Secular | Raheel Bashir & Aamir Jamal Khan
  15 February 2025

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  The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India