Book Review

Articles

• Pakistan
  24 January, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Perfect Storm: The History and Anatomy of 26/11
  by Prabhakar Aloka and Nikhil Ravi
  Ebury Press/Penguin Random House
  Pages: xxxi + 220; Price: Rs 499
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  If former Intelligence Bureau officer Prabhakar Aloka is to be believed, Pakistan

• Will there ever be peace in Gaza? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  24 May 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Gaza: A History
  by Jean-Pierre Filiu
  (Translated by John King)
  Pan MacMillan India
  Pages: xix + 563; Price: Not mentioned
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  It is difficult to imagine a more impoverished strip of land which lies at the heart of one of the most enduring and seemingly most intractable of historical disputes. Also called a dense open-air prison, Gaza is where peace will have to come first if the dragging Israeli-Palestinian row needs to (…)

• When The Other Moves Into Limelight | Radhakanta Barik
  11 March 2023, by Radhakanta Barik

  BOOK REVIEW __0__
  Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema in Neoliberal India by Šarūnas Paunksnis
  Oxford University Press 2019 ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0199493189 193 pages, Kindle Edition __0__
  GLOBALIZATION TRANSFORMED INDIA into modern economy in the mid-nineties. The positive impact on the economy, however, disrupted India’s traditional social structures. Withdrawal of the state from economic activities pushed society in India to modernise but created tenuous relationships in different (…)

• Review of K Saradamoni’s ’In Search of Answers: A Memoir’ I B Madhavan
  30 September 2023, by B. Madhavan

  Book Review
  by B Madhavan
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  In Search of Answers: A Memoir by K Saradamoni
  Tulika Books August 2023 245 Pages ISBN : 978-81-958394-0-7
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  Studying in the university, one meets students who are unsure where the discipline of economics would take them. Many see it as a degree that would land them high-paying jobs in consultancies and other corporate firms.
  Fortunately, there are still a lot of people who are disillusioned by the model-building part of their courses and (…)

• Review of Abbas’s Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb |
  13 April 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb: A Story of Defiance, Deterrence and Deviance
  by Hassan Abbas
  Oxford University Press
  2018. 356 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-090157-8
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  Reviewed by Raymond Whisenhunt (Air University, Air War College)
  Pakistan

• Review of Singh’s Caste, State and Society: Degrees of Democracy in North India | Radhakanta Barik
  3 February 2024, by Radhakanta Barik

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  by Radhakanta Barik
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  Caste, State and Society:
  Degrees of Democracy in North India
  by Jagpal Singh
  Routledge India 2021 / 330 Pages ISBN 9780367559748 __0__
  It is an interesting work to explain the position of MBC (Most backward castes) in the context of social economic and political changes happened after Independence. This is a rare study with detailed analysis of capitalism and its impact on the various castes specifically (…)

• Review: Thøgersen on Gasma’s ’Harbin: A cross-cultural biography’
  24 December 2022

  Reviewed by Stig Thøgersen (Aarhus University)
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  Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography
  by Mark Gamsa
  University of Toronto Press
  2022. 394 pp.
  ISBN 978-1-4875-4424-9.
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  This ambitious book runs along three parallel tracks. It tells the history of the city of Harbin in northeastern China; it gives an account of the life of Baron Roger Budberg, a physician with Russian citizenship who spent most of his life in that city; and it discusses, from several angles, the (…)

• Checkmating Communist China’s Rise and Rise | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  9 September 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Beijing Rules: China’s Quest for Global Influence by Bethany Allen
  John Murray Press ISBN-13: 9781529367799 Pages: xxix + 305; Price: Rs 799
  __0__ By now there is a growing amount of scholarship that the West, particularly the United States, has realized its folly of having allowed China to grow into an economic behemoth under the naive belief that the Communist state would embrace democratic values if it fell in love with capitalism. The reverse has happened, with (…)

• Review of Budjeryn’s ’Inheriting the Bomb’ | Wesley Fite
  26 July 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine
  by Mariana Budjeryn
  Johns Hopkins University Press
  2022. 328 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-4214-4586-1.
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  Reviewed by Wesley Fite
  With the hindsight of the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, some armchair strategists have questioned Ukraine

• Mughal Kings who Promoted Sanskrit, Hindu Epics | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  12 August 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court
  by Audrey Truschke
  Penguin Books Mar/2016 Pages: xiv + 362; Price: Rs 450 ISBN: 9780143428909
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  It is not without reason that Emperor Akbar (who ruled from 1556 to 1605) was always described as Akbar the Great – till Hindutva ideologues decided that popular admiration for him should go and he must be seen as another Muslim king who Hindu-majority India would have probably preferred to do without. (…)