Book Review

Articles

• Borders Are Not Real | G Narasimha Raghavan
  16 December 2022, by G Narasimha Raghavan

  Book Review
  Border Nation
  A Story of Migration
  by Leah Cowan
  Pluto Press, London
  2021 ISBN 978 0 7453 4107 1 (Paperback) __0__
  The UK’s border regulations and migration conundrums take a heavy verbal beating from Leah Cowan. The book Border Nation, a very challenging read, rich with examples, useful references and contemporary allusions, is Cowan’s first book. In this book, Cowan, a British citizen and former Politics Editor at gal-dem (an online magazine and media platform run (…)

• Review of Jane Mumby’s Dismantling the League of Nations | Madeleine Dungy
  18 January 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Dismantling the League of Nations: The Quiet Death of an International Organization, 1945-8
  by Jane Mumby
  Bloomsbury Academic
  2024. ix + 252 pp.
  (e-book (pdf)), ISBN 978-1-350-37690-8;
  (e-book), ISBN 978-1-350-37692-2
  __0__
  Reviewed by Madeleine Dungy
  Today, as multilateral organizations are coming under strain, it has become clear that we lack insight into the processes through which they might be streamlined, (…)

• Review of Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam | Francis R. Bradley
  9 September 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Francis R. Bradley (Pratt Institute)
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  Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Van Minh and Jazz in Hanoi by Stan BH. Minh Tan-Tangbau
  University Press of Mississippi 2021. 320 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4968-3633-5; (paper), ISBN 978-1-4968-3634-2
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  Stan BH Tan-Tangbau collaborated with saxophonist Quyền Vӑn Minh to write the first major history of jazz in Vietnam. Minh is the central figure in the book’s narrative and he writes (…)

• Watson on Seow’s Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia
  4 February 2023

  Reviewed by Andrew Watson (University of Saskatchewan)
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  Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia
  by Victor Seow
  Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
  University of Chicago Press 2021. 376 pp | ISBN 978-0-226-72199-6
  __0__
  Writing in 1940 about Japan’s energy security, German economist Kurt Bloch referred to coal as “the lifeblood of modern industry.”[1] As Victor Seow makes abundantly clear, this somewhat understated coal’s importance. With (…)

• To reclaim our country’s soul | Joydip Ghosal
  19 July 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  Review by Joydip Ghosal
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  Bharat Jodo Yatra, Reclaiming India’s Soul
  by Pushparaj Deshpande, Ruchira Chaturvedi
  HarperCollins Publishers India
  2024 | 348 pages
  P-ISBN: 978-93-5699-941-1
  __0__
  Bharat Jodo Yatra, Reclaiming India’s Soul is a comprehensive map of Bharat Jodo Jatra which was an epic nationwide march from September 2022 to January 2023. This definitive book attempts to portray the journey in its entirety. This (…)

• Quinn’s Review of Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism by Jason A. Heppler
  5 October 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism
  by Jason A. Heppler
  University of Oklahoma Press
  2024. 224 pp.
  (paper) ISBN 978-0-8061-9374-8
  __0__
  Reviewed by Adam Quinn (University of Oregon)

• Scholarly Inauguration Of New Genre Of Biography | Vijay Kumar
  26 July 2024, by Vijay Kumar

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Of Law And Life by Upendra Baxi
  in conversation with Arvind Narrain, Lawrence Liang, Sitharamam Kakarala, Sruti Chaganti
  Orient BlackSwan 2024 Pages 582 | Price Rs.2300/-
  __0__
  The Book: OF LAW AND LIFE: Upendra Baxi in conversation with Arvind Narrain, Lawrence Liang, Sitharamam Kakarala, Sruti Chaganti is a unique book. It has inaugurated radically new genre which straddles rich and varied forms. It is certainly not an (…)

• Review of Timothy Lorek’s Timothy, Making the Green Revolution: Agriculture and Conflict in Colombia | Javier Puente
  14 June 2024

  BOOK REVIEW
  Review by Javier Puente
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  Making the Green Revolution: Agriculture and Conflict in Colombia. Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges by Timothy Lorek
  University of North Carolina Press 2023. xxii + 317 pp (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-7382-0
  __0__
  In September 2016, Colombia’s government and the leadership of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) achieved the unthinkable. After a four-year series of conversations and negotiations, President Juan Manuel Santos (…)

• Review of Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts . . . | Gond & Chandravanshi
  29 March 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
  Henry Holt and Company 2018, 160 pages, ?3,230
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  Reviewed by Arun Kumar Gond, Ranjan Kumar Chandravanshi
  This book highlights the importance of avoiding social media. Author Jaron Lanier, a tech expert, critiques big tech and their exploitative practices. He explains how social media harms freedom, real-life interactions, and productivity while (…)

• For Others’ Sins, Ordinary Afghans Suffer | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  31 August 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Return of the Taliban: State, Society and Terror
  by Apratim Mukarji
  Vitasta Publishing Pvt.Ltd 2023, Pages: lii + 292 ISBN-10 8119670035 ISBN-13 978-8119670031
  __0__
  With very little hope that the Taliban may become a responsive administration, one does not know when millions of Afghans can even dream of a better tomorrow.
  This is the price ordinary Afghan men, women and children are today paying for the needless aggression (…)