Book Review

Articles

• Review of Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam | Francis R. Bradley
  9 September 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Francis R. Bradley (Pratt Institute)
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  Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Van Minh and Jazz in Hanoi by Stan BH. Minh Tan-Tangbau
  University Press of Mississippi 2021. 320 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4968-3633-5; (paper), ISBN 978-1-4968-3634-2
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  Stan BH Tan-Tangbau collaborated with saxophonist Quyền Vӑn Minh to write the first major history of jazz in Vietnam. Minh is the central figure in the book’s narrative and he writes (…)

• Sreenivasan. Review of Guha, Sumit, History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000
  16 September 2023

  Reviewed by Ramya Sreenivasan (University of Pennsylvania)
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  History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000 by Sumit Guha
  University of Washington Press 2019. 264 pp. (paper), ISBN 978-0-295-74621-0 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-295-74622-7
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  This book of extraordinary scholarship traces how different human societies have developed their modes of narrating and comprehending aspects of the past over time. This is a book about how collective knowledge about the past was (…)

• Review of Prabhakar’s The Crooked Timber of New India | Joydip Ghosal
  16 September 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  The Crooked Timber of New India Essays on a Republic in Crisis
  by Parakala Prabhakar
  Speaking Tiger Books
  2023
  ISBN: 9789354474132 __0__
  An insightful commentary on ‘New India’
  The fascinating and searing commentary titled The Crooked timber Of New India, Essays on a Republic in Crisis by Parakala Prabhakar is an honest attempt to speak truth to powers that be. This book published by speaking Tiger is compilation of essays written over a period of three years from (…)

• 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 of K Saradamoni’s ’In Search of Answers: A Memoir’ I B Madhavan
  30 September 2023, by B. Madhavan

  Book Review
  by B Madhavan
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  In Search of Answers: A Memoir by K Saradamoni
  Tulika Books August 2023 245 Pages ISBN : 978-81-958394-0-7
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  Studying in the university, one meets students who are unsure where the discipline of economics would take them. Many see it as a degree that would land them high-paying jobs in consultancies and other corporate firms.
  Fortunately, there are still a lot of people who are disillusioned by the model-building part of their courses and (…)

• Review of Mansoor Khan’s ’ONE: The Story of the Ultimate Myth’ | T Vijayendra
  21 October 2023, by T. Vijayendra

  BOOK REVIEW
  by T. Vijayendra
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  ONE: The Story of the Ultimate Myth
  by Mansoor Khan
  Harper Collins India 2023, Pp. 145
  Available at Amazon Rs. 449/-
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  It is a gem of a book! It is a small book, 145 pages. It is a fiction, a novella. Very satisfactory reading! Reminds me of the feeling I got after reading some of the great novellas - Lu Hsun’s ‘The True Story of Ah Q’ or Rajinder Singh Bedi’s ‘Ek Chadar Maili Si’. It has the touch of a film editor – not a single wasted (…)

• Review of O’Keeffe’s, Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia
  4 November 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Jasmine Calver
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  Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia by Brigid O’Keeffe
  London: Bloomsbury Academic 2021. 266 pp. $35.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-350-16067-5; $35.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-350-16066-8.
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  Esperanto and Internationalism
  Historians of internationalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries will have at least some knowledge of Esperanto, although for most the international language project remains (…)

• Thomas Klikauer’s Review of Machines Behaving Badly
  11 November 2023

  Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer
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  Machines Behaving Badly:
  The Morality of AI
  by Toby Walsh
  La Trobe University Press and Black Inc. Press, Collingwood
  2022. 275 pp.
  pb ISBN 9781760643423
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  Toby Walsh begins Machines Behaving Badly by making clear that ‘[i]n reality, artificial intelligence is [not a] conscious robot […] We cannot yet build machines that match the intelligence of a two-year-old […] program computers […] do narrow, focused tasks’ (1). Like a coffee maker (…)

• 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)
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  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
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  During the Anti-Japanese War (1937-45), Nationalist Party planners in China drew up ambitious (…)

• Why has communism failed to permanently change the world? | Apratim Mukarji
  25 November 2023, by Apratim Mukarji

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Yuddhakalin Sahitya Samgraha 1942 Editor: Utpal Sengupta
  Publisher Parul Prakashani Pvt. Ltd., 8/3, Chintamani Das Lane, Kolkata 700009 info[at]parulprakashani.in Price Rs. 500.00
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  Eminent economist John G. Gurley thought that India was one country where communist and Marxist tenets should take root, along with Italy, France, and Japan. “Marxism and Capitalism are now engaged in an intense, worldwide struggle. When Americans look beyond their borders, many (…)