Book Review

Articles

• A Report Card on India
  11 October 2025, by Arup Kumar Sen

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  A recently published book, To Kill A Democracy: India

• Ghosal’s Review of The Lone Wolf by Neha Dwivedi
  9 December 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Review by Joydip Ghosal
  __0__ The Lone Wolf The Untold Story of the Rescue of Sheikh Hasina by Neha Dwivedi
  Penguin Veer 2021 ISBN: 9780143452720 https://www.penguin.co.in/book/the-lone-wolf/
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  Neha Dwivedi was the daughter of a Kargil martyr. After her father’s untimely demise she found solace in writing. She is a child feeding specialist and child birth educator. She deeply believes in inspirational healing power of stories. Her book The Lone Wolf : The Untold (…)

• Amazing Truths about Our India | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  16 September 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  The Temple of Treasures: And other Incredible Tales of Indian Monuments by Storytrails
  Hachette India Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9391028179 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9391028176
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  Captain John Smith of the East India Company had already shot 99 tigers and was hunting for his 100th kill near Aurangabad in Maharashtra when he spotted a series of caves hidden behind a waterfall. He had to light a makeshift torch to beat the pitch darkness. The caves smelled. (…)

• An Insightful Peep into Pakistan’s Minorities | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  2 June 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  A White Trail: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities
  by Haroon Khalid
  Vintage/Penguin Random House Pages: xxi + 334; Price: Rs 399 (PP) ISBN: 9780143460770
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  How do religious minorities cope up in overwhelmingly Islamic Pakistan? Pakistan is not just a country founded by and for Muslims but it has taken great pains to educate entire generations to look down upon the "other" (read minorities), particularly since General Zia ul-Haq (…)

• Thomas Klikauer’s Review of Machines Behaving Badly
  11 November 2023

  Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer
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  Machines Behaving Badly:
  The Morality of AI
  by Toby Walsh
  La Trobe University Press and Black Inc. Press, Collingwood
  2022. 275 pp.
  pb ISBN 9781760643423
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  Toby Walsh begins Machines Behaving Badly by making clear that ‘[i]n reality, artificial intelligence is [not a] conscious robot […] We cannot yet build machines that match the intelligence of a two-year-old […] program computers […] do narrow, focused tasks’ (1). Like a coffee maker (…)

• Lukas Ley’s Review of The Pulse of the Earth by Adam Bobbette
  12 April 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  Review by Lukas Ley
  __0__ The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java by Adam Bobbette
  Duke University Press 2023. 248 pp. (e-book), ISBN 978-1-4780-2708-9 Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-2505-4 Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4780-2007-3
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  Dandy Volcanoes
  The Pulse of the Earth by Adam Bobette invites readers to get up close to the formation of the earth. This book is about active volcanoes in Indonesia, whose craters animate both geological (…)

• Maria Cristina Galmarini. Review of Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, The Afterlife of the ’Soviet Man’
  2 December 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Maria Cristina Galmarini (College of William & Mary)
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  The Afterlife of the

• A Book on Forgotten Refugees | Joydip Ghosal
  22 July 2023

  Forgotten Refugees, Two Iraqi Brothers in India
  by Nandita Haksar
  Speaking Tiger Books LLP
  2022
  ISBN- 978-93-5447-311-1 __0__
  Nandita Haksar is an eminent human rights lawyer who has left her own imprint and set a precedent in the arena of human rights law. Apart from that she is a renowned campaigner and teacher. Both in Indian courts and international fields she fought tirelessly for the rights of refugees whether they were internally displaced people or refugees evicted from (…)

• Review: Women’s Labor in Bangladesh
  15 April 2022

  Reviewed by Samita Sen
  __0__ An Empire of Touch: Women’s Political Labor and the Fabrication of East Bengal.
  by Poulomi Saha
  New York: Columbia University Press Gender and Culture Series 2019 | Illustrations. 344 pp. $65.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-231-19208-8. __0__
  The book under review, An Empire of Touch by Poulomi Saha, is organized around three parts. The first part is thematic, what Saha terms a "fabric genealogy," a running thread of textiles, starting with the now-extinct dhakai (…)

• Book Review: A Classic on Bangladesh Liberation War | M R Narayan Swamy
  28 December 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Bangladesh War: Report from Ground Zero
  Manas Ghosh
  Niyogi Books
  Pages: 220; Price: Rs 695
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  Pakistan’s military carried out a stinking genocide in East Pakistan in 1971, with the Chinese becoming accomplices in the mass murder, rape and torture. But terrible crimes were committed by the Nixon-Kissinger administration. That they actively came out against the Bengalis of East Pakistan and India is known. Former journalist Manas Ghosh reveals that the US (…)