Book Review

Articles

• Book Review: Gandhi’s ingenuously reconstructed autobiography | Suhas Borker
  30 July 2021, by Suhas Borker

  RESTLESS AS MERCURY:
  My Life As a Young Man
  by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
  Aleph Book Company | January 2021 | 400 p
  ISBN: 9788194874140
  https://www.alephbookcompany.com __0__
  As I read the preface by Gopalkrishna Gandhi to Restless as Mercury: My Life As A Young Man, I was reminded of what his elder brother and professor of philosophy Ramchandra Gandhi told me 30 years ago. Back in 1991, we were working together to make Jagran aur Gavahi: Tees (…)

• A Sri Lankan officer who even in LTTE custody remained a humanist |
  18 January 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]

• Rabindranath Tagore’s Spiritual Journeys | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  19 January 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

  REVIEW __0__
  Rabindranath Tagore: Among Saints Bipul Kumar Gangopadhyay
  Translators: Swaraj Kumar Chakrabarti and Dr Amitava Sanyal
  Vitasta 163pages; Price: Rs 395 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8119670892 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8119670895
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  To the world at large, Rabindranath Tagore is an icon in literature and philosophy, a man deeply committed to the idea of India, a deserving Nobel laureate, and a rarity among geniuses who wrote the national anthem of not one but two countries. Not much is (…)

• A Revolutionary Revolt Pre-1857 | M R Narayan Swamy
  27 November 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  Foreshadowing the Great Rebellion: The Vellore Revolt, 1806 by K.A. Manikumar
  Orient BlackSwan
  ISBN 9789354421181
  Pages 288
  Price: Rs 695
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  About half a century before the 1857 Rebellion or the First War of Independence, hundreds of Indian soldiers of the East India Company revolted against the British in 1806 in Vellore in present day Tamil Nadu. It was brutally crushed and hundreds of soldiers were mercilessly slaughtered by the British. In many ways, the (…)

• A Window to Cricket and India | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  26 August 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__ Not Just Cricket: A Reporter’s Journey through Modern India by Pradeep Magazine
  HarperCollins India Pages: 371; Price: Rs 599 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354892116 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9354892110
  __0__ The best part about Pradeep Magazine is that he just doesn’t love cricket but his heart beats for India. As he exposes the rot in the Indian cricket establishment while hailing some of the finest players the game has produced in this cricket-crazy country, Magazine also takes you to (…)

• The Rise and Fall of Basu Chatterji | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  29 April 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Basu Chatterji: And Middle-of-the-Road Cinema by Anirudha Bhattacharjee
  Vintage/Penguin Random House Pages: 305; Price: Rs 699 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670096253 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670096251
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  He put his own hard-earned money into the making of his first film, whose story be bought from noted Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav for Rs 21. It was the late 1960s. Sara Akash became a huge success and gave Basu Chatterji not just fame but a standing in the film world that stood by (…)

• Leo Chu Review of ’The Globalization of Wheat by Baranski’
  2 June 2023

  BOOK REVIEW Reviewed by Leo Chu (Cambridge University)
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  The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution by Marci Baranski INTERSECTIONS: Histories of Environment. University of Pittsburgh Press
  2022. 256 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8229-4734-9.
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  When discussing my research with someone from a different field, the term “Green Revolution” does not always ring a bell—people often think it means transition to renewable energy. Among historians, in (…)

• Bhagat’s Review of Toxic Immanence by Livia Monnet
  15 July 2023

  Reviewed by Raina Bhagat (Northwestern University)
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  Toxic Immanence:
  Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures
  by Livia Monnet
  Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022. 472 pp. ISBN 978-0-228-01136-1
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  Toxic Immanence: Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures is an edited collection with an ambitious scope, making impressive strides across both disciplines and genres to sketch out numerous paths toward the unequivocal need for the abolition of nuclear (…)

• Credible Fantasies | T Vijeyendra
  15 July 2023

  T Vijayendra has just published a new book of short stories with a title, ‘Credible Fantasies’. The blurb reads:
  ‘The central idea of the fantasies presented here is to imagine a future for my young friends with ‘Green Jobs’, that is, jobs that help in restoring ecology and creating equity among humans. It is a very difficult proposition under the present circumstances and hence I refer to them as ‘fantasies’.
  ‘However, conditions are changing fast and soon it will be possible for (…)

• Charles Reitz’s Review of The Marcusean Mind
  29 November 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  The Marcusean Mind
  Edited by Eduardo Altheman C. Santos, Jina Fast, Nicole K. Mayberry and Sid Simpson
  Routledge, London
  2025. 602 pp.
  ISBN 9781032462998
  __0__
  Reviewed by Charles Reitz
  We are living in world-historical, conflict-ridden times. Many of us have spent our whole professional lives as teachers in the multicultural education reform movement. We have worked with excellent colleagues, but we have faced strong (…)