Book Review

Articles

• Prakash Singh and the Future of Police Reforms in Independent India | KS Subramanian
  11 March 2023, by K S Subramanian

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  The Struggle For Police Reforms in India : Ruler’s Police to People’s Police by Prakash Singh
  Rupa Publications India May 2022 Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9355202474 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9355202475
  __0__
  Prakash Singh is a leading former IPS officers of India. He belongs to the Uttar Pradesh cadre of the IPS and was the state’s Director General of Police. He was also DG of the Border Security Force, a Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) such as the CRPF (…)

• Commanding prescription for furthering justice through privileging politics over economics | Vijay Kumar
  25 May 2024, by Vijay Kumar

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Justice by Means of Democracy
  by Danielle Allen
  Indian Print by Satyam Books Pvt. Ltd. 2023 Page 282 Price Rs.995/-
  __0__
  The ‘Theory of Justice’ by John Rawls was published in 1971, and since then has been holding the reign of most original work, at least in the post-second World War. The fundamental of Rawlsian paradigm was challenged first time by Prof. Amartya Sen in ‘Idea of Justice’ in 2009 by shifting the focus from (…)

• 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 (…)

• Rishi Sunak: The Success Story of a Minority in Britain | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  25 February 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  Rishi Sunak: The Rise
  by Michael Ashcroft
  Hachette India; Pages: 357; Price: Rs 699
  __0__
  If Britain was engulfed by a majoritarian ideology, Rishi Sunak would have never become the Prime Minister.
  It goes to the credit of Britain’s democracy that a young man born to Indian immigrants (a Hindu at that) defeated veterans in an overwhelmingly white constituency and finally moved into 10 Downing Street. All that mattered to the Conservatives and British voters (…)

• Johanne Marais’s Review of Chirimuuta, M., The Brain Abstracted
  23 November 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience
  by M. Chirimuuta
  MIT Press
  March 5, 2024, 376 pp.
  Paperback ISBN: 9780262548045
  __0__
  Reviewed by Johann

• Review of Vijayan’s India vs. RSS – a book against majoritarian agenda | Joydip Ghosal
  20 April 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  In the book India vs RSS by Pinarayi Vijayan asserts that the battle for democratic and secular India against totalitarian RSS is winnable. CPI (M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan is the chief minister of Kerala. He served as Minister of Electric Power and Cooperatives from 1996 to 1998. He was born in Kannur which was the “ground zero of RSS terror.”
  The majoritarian ideology is steeped in hatred and parochialism. Vijayan in this book shows that (…)

• Vincenzo Colaprice. Review of Koivunen, Pia, Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy
  8 March

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy
  by Pia Koivunen
  De Gruyter Oldenbourg
  2023. Illustrations. 303 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-3-11-075844-3;
  Free (open access), ISBN 978-3-11-076116-0
  __0__
  Reviewed by Vincenzo Colaprice (University of Turin)
  Youth Festivals and Soviet Diplomacy
  On December 24, 2025, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) issued a call to (…)

• Motivated Attempt To Denigrate The Constitution | Vijay Kumar
  17 August 2024, by Vijay Kumar

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  The Colonial Constituion by Arghya Sengupta
  Juggernaut Page 285 Price Inr 599/-
  __0__
  The colonial constitution by Arghya Sengupta has come at a time when talks for the new Constitution are being floated in certain quarters, especially by those perceived to be close to the present ruling dispensation.
  The Constitution of India was the outcome of intense deliberations by the framers of the Constituent Assembly, on the one hand, (…)

• Revisiting the 1943 Bengal Famine | Arup Kumar Sen
  19 July 2024, by Arup Kumar Sen

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  The Bengal famine of 1943 has found expressions in the academic discourse over the years. Amartya Sen’s Poverty and Famines (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981) and Paul R. Greenough’s Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-44 (Oxford University Press, 1982) are classic books on the subject. Madhusree Mukerjee’s more recent book titled Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (Basic (…)

• Celebrating Multi-Cultural Lives and the Possible India | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
  26 August 2022

  Book Review by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
  __0__ Sumitra and Anees: Tales and Recipes from a Khichdi Family by Seema Chishti
  Harper Collins, Publishers India 2022 189 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354895883 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9354895883 __0__
  Seema Chishti’s slim book is a tribute to her parents, and to the secular, multi-cultural “mini-India” that they created. Sumitra Bai and Anees Mohammed Chishti came together across region (she from Karnataka, he from Uttar Pradesh), religion (her Kayasth (…)