Book Review

Articles

• Buxton’s Review of Chen, Thomas, Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film
  9 December 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Review by David Buxton
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  Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film
  by Thomas Chen
  Columbia University Press 2022. 248 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-20400-2; (paper), ISBN 978-0-231-20401-9
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  Tiananmen and Censorship in China
  Any book about China at present runs the risk of being commandeered by the latent, impending Cold War between China and the United States; an analysis of the former’s political system that highlights its (…)

• Review of Markus Rediker et. al. (eds.) A Global History of Runaways | Mark Dunick
  6 April 2024

  BOOK REVIEW
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  A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism 1600-1850
  by Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty, Matthias van Rossum, eds.
  University of California Press 2019. Pages: 280 ISBN: 9780520304369.
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  Workers on the Run during the Rise of Capitalism
  The rise of the European empires between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries led to the creation of an increasingly global economic system based on long-distance trade, commodity production, and (…)

• 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 (…)

• Review: Steiner on Anctil’s ’Luminous Creatures: The History and Science of Light Production in Living Organisms’
  7 January 2023

  Reviewed by Katharina Steiner (University of Geneva)
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  Luminous Creatures: The History and Science of Light Production in Living Organisms by Michel Anctil
  Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press
  2018. 488 pp. ISBN 978-0-7735-5312-5
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  With his book on the history and science of light production in living animals, Michel Anctil offers a rich history of a phenomenon that has triggered not only superstition, optical illusions, and imaginative worlds but also the (…)

• Conquering the last bastion: The growth of Hindutva in Kerala | Sanjana K.S.
  22 March 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEW:blanc]fond noir]
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  Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala
  by Nissim Mannathukkaren
  Routledge
  1st edition (31 July 2024) 272 pages
  ISBN-10 : ? 1032003065
  ISBN-13 ?: ? 978-1032003061
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  A decade since the remarkable victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 with Narendra Modi in the fore has opened a plethora of academic debates on the party

• Ram Puniyani on Bremen and Shah’s Gujarat, Cradle and Harbinger of Identity Politics: India’s Injurious Frame of Communalism
  22 April 2022

  Book Review by Ram Puniyani
  __0__ Gujarat, Cradle and Harbinger of Identity Politics: India’s Injurious Frame of Communalism
  by Jan Breman and Ghanshyam Shah
  Tulika Books, New Delhi 2022. 388 Pages Price: Rs. 1200 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 819505594X ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8195055944 __0__
  India has witnessed communal violence from over a century. The Gujarat carnage stands out as a major blot in the series of acts of violent episodes for more reasons than one. This was a state where even before (…)

• 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 (…)

• Risks and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change | K N Ninan
  20 May 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  by K N Ninan *
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  Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change by Vinod Thomas
  Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore 2023. xxiii + 195p. US$ 27.99 ISBN 978-981-19-8620-8 ISBN 978-981-19-8621-5 (eBook) __0__
  At no time in human history has mankind faced multiple environmental challenges as the current generation such as unprecedented levels of climate change, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, pollution, and land degradation. While releasing the synthesis (…)

• Review of Minami’s, People’s Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold Wa
  17 August 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  People’s Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold War
  by Kazushi Minami
  Cornell University Press
  2024. 270 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-5017-7415-7
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  Reviewed by Yanqiu Zheng (St. Lawrence University)
  Kazushi Minami

• Book Review: What Can India do in Afghanistan? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  1 July 2022

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Afghanistan: The New Great Game
  Edited by Alok Bansal
  Pentagon Press LLP; Pages: 201; Price: Rs 895 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9390095492
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  Now that America has blundered and Pakistan has scored a strategic victory with the return of the Taliban, what are India’s options vis-à-vis Afghanistan?
  Can there be a meeting point between a country like India and a radical Islamist outfit like Taliban?
  One of the best known experts on the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, (…)