Book Review

Articles

• 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]
  __0__
  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 (…)

• Why has communism failed to permanently change the world? | Apratim Mukarji
  25 November 2023, by Apratim Mukarji

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  Yuddhakalin Sahitya Samgraha 1942 Editor: Utpal Sengupta
  Publisher Parul Prakashani Pvt. Ltd., 8/3, Chintamani Das Lane, Kolkata 700009 info[at]parulprakashani.in Price Rs. 500.00
  __0__
  Eminent economist John G. Gurley thought that India was one country where communist and Marxist tenets should take root, along with Italy, France, and Japan. “Marxism and Capitalism are now engaged in an intense, worldwide struggle. When Americans look beyond their borders, many (…)

• Review of Prabhakar’s The Crooked Timber of New India | Joydip Ghosal
  16 September 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  The Crooked Timber of New India Essays on a Republic in Crisis
  by Parakala Prabhakar
  Speaking Tiger Books
  2023
  ISBN: 9789354474132 __0__
  An insightful commentary on ‘New India’
  The fascinating and searing commentary titled The Crooked timber Of New India, Essays on a Republic in Crisis by Parakala Prabhakar is an honest attempt to speak truth to powers that be. This book published by speaking Tiger is compilation of essays written over a period of three years from (…)

• An extraordinary memoir of an acid attack survivor | Joydip Ghosal
  19 January 2024

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  Being Reshma Reshma Qureshi with Tania Singh
  Pan Macmillan India
  248 pages
  ISBN-978-93-86215-52-9
  __0__
  Being Reshma, The Extraordinary Story of an Acid-Attack Survivor Who Took the World by Storm by Reshma Qureshi is haunting and tragic. She and Tania Singh penned the memoir. This book is not only an exposition on acid attack or her craving for justice. It is more than that.
  Tania Singh is the CEO of Make Love Not Scars. Throughout the book her empathy (…)

• Bilston on Taylor, ’Women and Gardens: A History from the Victorian Era to Today’
  10 January

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Women and Gardens: A History from the Victorian Era to Today
  by Judith M. Taylor
  University of New Mexico Press
  2025. Illustrations. 218 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-0-8263-6783-9.
  __0__
  Reviewed by Sarah Bilston (Trinity College)
  Judith M. Taylor

• When Truth Defeated Murdoch | M R Narayan Swamy
  2 April 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies Publishers: Vintage Books, London; Pages 444; Price: 14.99 pounds
  FOR too long he was considered invincible. The Australia-born American media mogul was all too powerful, who thought he could make and unmake governments — if nowhere else certainly in Britain. And his was a vast empire. Murdoch owned (and still does) hundreds of local, national and international publishing outlets including The Sun and (…)

• 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 (…)

• Review of Harris’s Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies: Co-operatives, Mutual Aid and Universal Basic Income | Domonkos Sik
  1 June

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies: Co-operatives, Mutual Aid and Universal Basic Income
  by Neal Harris
  Manchester University Press
  2026. 184 pp.,
  ISBN 9781526172228
  __0__
  Reviewed by Domonkos Sik
  Neal Harris is taking on a daunting quest: critiquing those emancipatory movements that, by their own definition and according to the mainstream view of Marxist and critical sociology, are supposed to widen the

• Essential and Fascinating Facts about Indian Elections | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  17 May 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  __0__
  Chambers Book of Indian Election Facts
  by Kingshuk Chatterjee and Surbek Biswas
  Hachette India 2024 Pages: xii + 563; Price: Rs 699 PB ISBN : 9789357318389
  __0__
  An estimated 2.8 million of the 80 million potential women voters could not make it to the electoral rolls when India conducted its first general election after independence. The reason? These women, mostly in northern India, wished to register themselves as ‘the (…)

• How Development Has Become Nature’s Enemy | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  17 June 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__
  Marginlands:
  Indian Landscapes on the Brink
  by Arati Kumar Rao
  Picador India
  Pages: 240
  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9395624434
  ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9395624435 __0__
  Man’s unending penchant for ’development’ is triggering a disaster of epic proportions all across India – and probably in much of the so-called developing world. This is why gigantic projects have deepened the very problems they were supposed to resolve, why urban landscapes have turned a veritable foe for (…)