Book Review

Articles

• Aruna Roy’s memoir reminds us as much of some great achievements as of the bigger challenges ahead | Bharat Dogra
  3 August 2024, by Bharat Dogra

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  Aruna Roy’s memoir published by HarperCollins under the title ‘The Personal is Political –An Activist’s Memoir’ has attracted a lot of attention within a short time, and for good reason. A part of the reason relates to what Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze say in their comment on the book, “Aruna Roy reflects on a life of deep engagement, weaving the personal and the political. A great inspiration.”
  For most people Aruna Roy is a highly inspiring (…)

• An honest police officer speaks but questions remain | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  9 February 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Crime, Grime and Gumption: Case Files of an IPS Officer by O.P. Singh
  Penguin Random House 2024 235 pages; Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 9780143464167 235pages; Price: Rs 499 __0__
  It is indeed a remarkable personal triumph when a 14-year-old who goes to a police station in a rural part of Bihar and is told to return home to fetch writing paper if he wants to report a theft in his house eventually becomes the police chief of India’s most (…)

• Review: Raghavan on ’New threats to human security in the Anthropocene’ by UNDP
  2 December 2022, by G Narasimha Raghavan

  Reviewed by G Narasimha Raghavan __0__
  New threats to human security in the Anthropocene:
  Demanding greater solidarity
  United Nations Development Programme New York: UNDP - 2022, viii+175 pages
  Available at: https://hdr.undp.org/content/2022-special-report-human-security __0__
  The renowned cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker, said that we are all visual creatures. Images, rather than sound, impact us more. There are three images during the most recent period (an unofficial unit (…)

• 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

• Beyond the Fences: A Rationale for Cohesive Development | Sanjoy De, Atanu Sengupta
  20 April 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Birth of an Alternative Development Paradigm: Unfolding of Transformative Mode of Production
  by Sunil Ray
  Germinal Publications Pvt. Ltd. (Publisher of frontier weekly)
  2024. 250 INR.
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  Development is the buzzword of today. Everybody speaks of it as if it is the only religion and pursuit of the modern day. In his populist book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari (2015) argued that the ability of man to (…)

• Review of Electrifying Mexico by Diana J. Montaño | Jaclyn A. Sumner
  12 August 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Jaclyn A. Sumner (Presbyterian College)
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  Electrifying Mexico:
  Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City
  by Diana J. Montaño
  University of Texas Press 2021. Illustrations. xiv + 373 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4773-2345-8
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  In Electrifying Mexico, Diana J. Montaño examines how government officials, engineers, citizens, and others worked to illuminate and power up Mexico City, the nation’s capital and emblem of progress. Montaño’s book is (…)

• Review of Puia’s Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and the Politics of Peace in Northeast India | P Kham Sian Muan Zou
  9 November 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and the Politics of Peace in Northeast India
  by Roluah Puia
  Cambridge University Press
  2023
  ISBN: 9781009346078
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  Reviewed by P Kham Sian Muan Zou
  Roluahpuia

• Reporting at its Courageous Best | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  21 October 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  Review by M.R. Narayan Swamy
  __0__ Bullets and Bylines: From the Frontlines of Kabul, Delhi, Damascus and Beyond by Shyam Bhatia
  Speaking Tiger Pages: 249; Price: Rs 599 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1720226733 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1720226734
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  Shyam Bhatia got out of two tense situations because of Bollywood. The India-born Bhatia was walking in Baghdad towards the ousted Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace when he saw 40 to 50 Iraqis shouting hoarse at an American soldier on a US Army Humvee. (…)

• Why Nature Turned Furious on Kedarnath Region? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  18 August 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  The Raging Himalayas and A Warming Planet: Recollections of the 2003 Himalayan Floods and Reflections on Global Warning by Asokan Vengassery Krishnan
  Konark ISBN: 9788195678693 Pages: 210; Price: Rs 495
  __0__ Even as he entered the scenic Himalayan region of Kedarnath in June 2003, Asokan Krishnan felt disgusted on seeing the ugly all-round construction in brazen violation of the environment. There were plenty of multi-storey lodges and hotels built on the delicate (…)

• Is Our Democracy Dying? | Papri Sri Raman
  13 August 2022, by Papri Sen Sri Raman

  BOOK REVIEW
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  The Silent Coup: A History of India’s Deep State by Josy Joseph
  Context-Westland 2021 Rs 454 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9390679532 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9390679539
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  I WAS TALKING to a journalist friend across a 5G spectrum 2000 km away, asking her to pick up the July issue of the Caravan magazine that features the Rise and Fall of the NIA. She said, ‘I am really scared. Fall does not mean it does not exist’.
  The subject had come up in the context of an interview she had (…)