Book Review

Articles

• Review of Becker & other’s Transnational Communism across the Americas | Thomas Field
  24 February 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Transnational Communism across the Americas by Marc Becker, Margaret Power, Tony Wood, and Jacob A. Zumoff
  University of Illinois Press 2023. 288 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-04522-6 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-08736-3
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  Despite its title, which hints at an expansive pretense, Transnational Communism across the Americas succeeds in a focused goal: better understanding the role of orthodox, Moscow-backed Communism in Latin America (…)

• 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 (…)

• Kimberley Peters. Review of Rachael Squire, Undersea Geopolitics: Sealab, Science, and the Cold War
  14 September 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Undersea Geopolitics: Sealab, Science, and the Cold War. Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds
  by Rachael Squire
  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
  2021. 180 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78660-730-0.
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  Reviewed by Kimberley Peters
  In a recent work-related exchange with a colleague, it was mentioned that many students in the classroom today, in 2024

• The Art of Collecting Priceless Books | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  8 April 2023

  BOOK REVIEW The Book Beautiful: A Memoir of Collecting Rare and Fine Books
  by Pradeep Sebastian
  Hachette India Pages: 306; Price: Rs 699
  Bengaluru-based Pradeep Sebastian would have remained a simple bibliophile who venerated bookshops all his life until he began came across books the likes of which he had never seen or handled earlier. And so was born, around 2015, a no-doubt costly but immensely satisfying hobby of chasing and collecting rare and fine books in a (…)

• An X-Ray of Britain’s scheming and India’s follies on China | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  17 February 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir] __0__ Cross Winds: Nehru, Zhou and the Anglo-American Competition over China; by Vijay Gokhale
  Vintage/Penguin Random House
  Pages: xvii + 235; Price: Rs 699 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670099910 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670099917 Former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s scholarly study is a pointer that Jawaharlal Nehru may not have been the biggest villain of India’s disastrous policy on China after all. Based on startling archival material, Gokhale’s (…)

• An Accidental but Secular Prime Minister | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  21 May 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  Furrows in a Field: The Unexplored Life of H.D. Deve Gowda
  by Sugata Srinivasaraju
  Vintage/Penguin Random House
  Pages: 562; Price Rs 799
  ISBN: 9780670093434
  __0__ He was a reluctant Prime Minister but proved his worth once he entered 7 Race Course Road; he remains a devout Hindu but respects all religions; he rose in politics the hard way, taking loans each time he fought elections; he was a product of provincial politics but embraced a national vision. Meet Haradanahalli Dadde (…)

• Chatterjee on Creativity from the Periphery by Deepanwita Dasgupta
  22 July 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Animesh Chatterjee (Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger)
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  Creativity from the Periphery: Trading Zones of Scientific Exchange in Colonial India
  by Deepanwita Dasgupta
  University of Pittsburgh Press 2021. 312 pp. (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8229-8802-1 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4656-4.
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  Outlining her arguments, Deepanwita Dasgupta writes that the purpose of Creativity from the Periphery: Trading Zones of (…)

• A Reality Check on Operation Sindoor |
  19 March, by M R Narayan Swamy

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

• Dissecting a Dictator amid Western Hypocrisy | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  7 June 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution
  by Lindsey Hilsum
  Faber and Faber
  Pages: xxi + 228; Price: Rs 599
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  That Muammar Gaddafi suffered a horrible death at the hands of some of those he had tormented for decades is no news. That he, his family as well as cronies bled Libya during the 42 years that he presided over the country is also known. What makes award-winning journalist Lindsey Hilsum

• Book Review: Hippies in the Soviet Union | Alexander Vari
  16 September 2022

  Reviewed by Alexander Vari (Marywood University)
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  Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland.
  by Juliane Furst
  Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021 496 pp. (e-book), ISBN 978-0-19-109251-0 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-878832-4
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  Although hippiedom emerged first in the 1960s in the United States, attracting scholarly attention from early on, there is a rising interest in contemporary academia in exploring the hippie phenomenon as a global one.[1] For instance, (…)