Home > Keywords > Topics > Book Review

Book Review

Articles

  • Book Review: The Scars of Democracy - Theodor Adorno and the crises of liberalism | Peter E. Gordon
    27 January 2024

    BOOK REVIEW
    Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
    By Theodor W. Adorno; Wieland Hoban, trans.
    On April 6, 1967, Theodor W. Adorno accepted an invitation from the Association of Socialist Students at the University of Vienna to deliver a lecture on “aspects of the new right-wing extremism.” The topic held a special urgency: The National Democratic Party, a recently founded neofascist group in West Germany, was surging in popularity and would soon surpass the official 5 percent (…)

  • 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]
    __0__
    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 (…)

  • Aruna Roy’s memoir reminds us as much of some great achievements as of the bigger challenges ahead | Bharat Dogra
    3 August 2024, by Bharat Dogra

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
    Aruna Roy’s memoir published by HarperCollins under the title ‘The Personal is Political –An Activist’s Memoir’ has attracted a lot of attention within a short time, and for good reason. A part of the reason relates to what Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze say in their comment on the book, “Aruna Roy reflects on a life of deep engagement, weaving the personal and the political. A great inspiration.”
    For most people Aruna Roy is a highly inspiring (…)

  • Why Alternative Development Paradigm Matters? | Jos Chathukulam
    15 March 2025, by Jos Chathukulam

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
    __0__
    Birth of an Alternative Development Paradigm: Unfolding Transformative Mode of Production
    by Sunil Ray
    Germinal Publications Pvt. Ltd (Sharmistha Dutta on behalf of Germinal Publications Pvt. Ltd), Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
    __0__
    Birth of an Alternative Development Paradigm: Unfolding Transformative Mode of Production by Sunil Ray introduces to us a novel development framework

  • Book Review: Ram Jethmalani - A Perennial Rebel | M R Narayan Swamy
    6 February 2021, by M R Narayan Swamy

    Title: The Rebel: A Biography of Ram Jethmalani; Author: Susan Adelman; Publishers: Shobhaa De Books (An Imprint of Penguin Random House): Pages: 607; Price: Rs 550
    The legendary Ram Jethmalani, who passed away just before turning 96, was one of the most successful lawyers the Indian sub-continent produced. A legal craftsman, a part-time politician, a maverick of sorts, a quintessential Sindhi, an admirer of good looking women till the very end… Ram was all this and more. Just how did he (…)

  • Review of Srinivasulu Karli’s Caste, Dominance and Resistance
    12 May

    BOOK REVIEW
    __0__
    Caste, Dominance and Resistance

  • A Star of Cochin Port Sounds Wake Up Call for Kerala | M.R. Narayan Swamy
    13 September 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
    __0__
    Notes from Willingdon Island: The Past, The Present, and The Future of Cochin Port and its Hinterland
    by N. Ramachandran
    Konark
    Pages: xxvi + 334; Price: Rs 900
    __0__
    This is a beautiful and straight-from-the-heart account of the Cochin Port

  • Sustained from Below: Dalit Women and the Ambedkarite Movement’s Limits of Liberation 
| Theertha Praveen Panachoor
    25 June

    BOOK REVIEW 1. The Prisons We Broke, Baby Kamble, trans. Maya Pandit. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2008. 2. We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement, Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon, trans. Wandana Sonalkar. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2008. 
The history of the Ambedkarite movement in India has largely been written as a history of its leadership. Its constitutional achievements, its formal organisations and its founding figure are well documented. What has received far less attention is (…)

  • Michael Degani Review of Mohsin’s, Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development
    19 October 2024

    BOOK REVIEW
    __0__
    Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development
    by Anto Mohsin
    University of Wisconsin Press
    2023. xvii + 245 pp.
    (cloth), ISBN 978-0-299-34540-2
    __0__
    Reviewed by Michael Degani (University of Cambridge)
    By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Indonesia

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

    Reviewed by Stig Thøgersen (Aarhus University)
    __0__
    Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography
    by Mark Gamsa
    University of Toronto Press
    2022. 394 pp.
    ISBN 978-1-4875-4424-9.
    __0__
    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 (…)