Book Review

Articles

• Review of India’s National Security Challenges Edited by NN Vohra
  16 December 2023, by K S Subramanian

  Reviewed by KS Subramanian IPS (retd)
  __0__
  India’s National Security Challenges Edited by NN Vohra India International Centre, New Delhi Primus Books
  2023 HB ISBN : 978-93-5852-037-8
  __0__
  This is a collection of articles on India’s national security, edited by N N Vohra former J& K Governor (2008-18) and Life Trustee of the India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi, devoted to promotion of discussion on national security and similar issues.
  The Covid 19 pandemic had (…)

• McVeigh Review of Pesic’s ’Sounding Bodies’
  17 February 2023

  Reviewed by Bronwen McVeigh (University of Rochester)
  __0__
  Sounding Bodies: Music and the Making of Biomedical Science by Peter Pesic
  MIT Press
  2022. 408 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-0-262-04635-0
  __0__
  Pythagoras’s acousmatic veil feels like an appropriate place to begin a review regarding the intimate connections between the seemingly disparate fields of biomedical and music history. According to the tale, frustrated Pythagoras opted to teach behind a sheath, believing that the (…)

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

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  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
  __0__
  Reviewed by Louise Westling (University of Oregon)
  Melissa Leach and James Fairhead offer a bold new perspective of

• Review of Hari Singh’s Looking Back with Delight | Subramanian
  12 January 2024, by K S Subramanian

  Reviewed by KS Subramanian
  __0__
  Looking Back with Delight: A Memoir by Hari Singh
  Solicitor and Notary Public, England and Wales (Academy of Business Studies, New Delhi)
  pp 320 Price Rs. 890 $ 20.99
  __0__
  This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary personality who is solicitor and notary public in the UK and the Wales. The book tells his life experience in India, his land of birth and the UK his land of professional experience as a civil servant, legal luminary and (…)

• Review of Solomon’s Lifelines: The Traffic of Trauma | Saurav K. Rai
  27 September 2025

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  Lifelines:
  The Traffic of Trauma
  by Harris Solomon
  Duke University Press
  2022. xiv + 286 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4780-1621-2; $27.95
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-4780-1885-8.
  __0__
  Reviewed by Saurav K. Rai (Gandhi Smriti)
  Cultural theorist and media expert Ravi Sundaram, centering his analysis on Delhi in the 1990s against the backdrop of rising instances of car accidents as private car ownership proliferated, argued that contemporary India is suffused with (…)

• Review of Budjeryn’s ’Inheriting the Bomb’ | Wesley Fite
  26 July 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine
  by Mariana Budjeryn
  Johns Hopkins University Press
  2022. 328 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-4214-4586-1.
  __0__
  Reviewed by Wesley Fite
  With the hindsight of the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, some armchair strategists have questioned Ukraine

• Review of Russian Revolution and the Indian Freedom Struggle Edited by Jaya Mehta | K.S. Chalam
  3 August 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Russian Revolution and the Indian Freedom Struggle Conceptualization: Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, Editor: Jaya Mehta Aakar Books, Delhi
  __0__
  Twenty First century India view the images of struggles that suit its history, economic structure and social base to get rid of an exploitative system that is more entrenched today than what was imagined under Imperialism during the last century. In fact, the Freedom movement in India had a (…)

• AMU: Institution of Learning or Intellectual Ghetto? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  22 February 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  AMU: Institution of Learning or Identity
  by Anil Maheshwari and Arjun Maheshwari
  Ink/Occam
  Pages: xvii + 431; Price: Rs 899
  __0__
  Anil Maheshwari, the lead author I know, is as secular an Indian as one can be. The book recognises, and rightly so, how the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has come under repeated and unfair attacks from the Hindu Right because of its Islamic character. The authors are against the Modi government

• How A Secret Meet Between Badal and Rajiv Fizzled Out | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  18 March 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  Living a Life Hardcover by Ravi Sawhney Konark Publishers Pvt.Ltd | 10 February 2023 Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 264 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8195678637 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8195678631 __0__
  1980 brought the Congress to power in Punjab and turned the defeated Akalis belligerent. The state began to feel the heat as the Akali Dal launched a massive agitation for the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution of 1973. Although the Akalis did not create Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, they did not speak (…)

• 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]
  __0__
  Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and the Politics of Peace in Northeast India
  by Roluah Puia
  Cambridge University Press
  2023
  ISBN: 9781009346078
  __0__
  Reviewed by P Kham Sian Muan Zou
  Roluahpuia