Book Review

Articles

• Thomas Klikauer’s Review of Machines Behaving Badly
  11 November 2023

  Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer
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  Machines Behaving Badly:
  The Morality of AI
  by Toby Walsh
  La Trobe University Press and Black Inc. Press, Collingwood
  2022. 275 pp.
  pb ISBN 9781760643423
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  Toby Walsh begins Machines Behaving Badly by making clear that ‘[i]n reality, artificial intelligence is [not a] conscious robot […] We cannot yet build machines that match the intelligence of a two-year-old […] program computers […] do narrow, focused tasks’ (1). Like a coffee maker (…)

• Review of Postmodern Gandhi & Politics, Ethics and the Self Re-reading Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj | Chotelal Kumar
  12 January 2024, by Chhotelal Kumar

  BOOK REVIEW
  by Chotelal Kumar
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  Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays
  Gandhi in the World and at Home
  by Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
  The University of Chicago Press | 2006 - 272 pages
  ISBN-10 : 0226731235
  ISBN-13 : 978-0226731230
  https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo4343100.html
  o o
  Politics, Ethics and the Self Re-reading Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj
  Edited By Rajeev Bhargava
  Routledge India | 2022 - 370 Pages
  ISBN 9780367488598 (…)

• Bhavuk’s Review of Nehru’s India by Aditya Mukherjee
  7 December 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Nehru’s India: Past, Present and Future
  by Aditya Mukherjee
  Vintage Books
  Penguin (25 November 2024)
  Hardcover: 208 pages
  ISBN-10 : 0143471953
  ISBN-13 : 978-0143471950
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  Reviewed by Bhavuk
  An Appraisal of Nehru In Our Times
  Seeing the 14th of November pass uneventfully, one felt dejected that Nehru was not being discussed at such a crucial time for Indian democracy. Aditya Mukherjee’s book Nehru’s India: Past, (…)

• Charles Reitz’s Review of The Marcusean Mind
  29 November 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Marcusean Mind
  Edited by Eduardo Altheman C. Santos, Jina Fast, Nicole K. Mayberry and Sid Simpson
  Routledge, London
  2025. 602 pp.
  ISBN 9781032462998
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  Reviewed by Charles Reitz
  We are living in world-historical, conflict-ridden times. Many of us have spent our whole professional lives as teachers in the multicultural education reform movement. We have worked with excellent colleagues, but we have faced strong (…)

• Review of Panter-Brick’s Gandhi and the Middle East | Vedh P. Siv
  12 July 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Gandhi and the Middle East
  Jews, Arabs and Imperial Interests
  by Simone Panter-Brick
  I.B. Tauris
  First Edition, Jan 2015
  ISBN 9781784530228
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  02 May 2025
  Introduction
  When India attained its independence in 1947, the nation was principled on two ideas --- peace and non-violence, for both, the nation and its people. These ideas were inspired from Mahatma Gandhi, one among the greatest freedom fighters and the Father (…)

• Review of Bhattacharya’s, Disparate Remedies | Asmita Sarkar
  12 January 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India
  by Nandini Bhattacharya
  McGill-Queen’s University Press
  Intoxicating Histories Series
  2023. xii + 257 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-0-228-01753-0
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  Reviewed by Asmita Sarkar (University of Oxford)
  In Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India, Nandini Bhattacharya investigates the historical roots of the contemporary pharmaceutical industry in India. Bhattacharya

• 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 (…)

• Dissecting What Destroyed Prabhakaran, LTTE | Sivadas Sankar
  26 January 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Rout of Prabhakaran
  by M.R. Narayan Swamy
  Konark
  Pages: xvii + 142; Price Rs 895
  (Also includes Inside an Elusive Mind: Prabhakaran: The First Profile of the World

• The Rafale Deal: A Chit on Our Conscience | Papri Sri Raman
  21 January 2023, by Papri Sen Sri Raman

  BOOK REVIEW
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  The Rafale Deal-Flying Lies:
  The Role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India’s Biggest Defence Scandal
  by Ravi Nair & Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
  Publisher: Paranjoy
  Pages:560
  Price: Rs 795
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  IN 1987, VP SINGH, the ruling party’s Rajya Sabha leader and a sitting minister (who had held powerful portfolios like finance and defence) in a popularly elected government went around pointing to a chit in his pocket. My parliament reporter friends used to (…)

• Reading The Housekeeper and the Professor in a Distracted Century | Disha
  27 September 2025, by Disha

  In my quest to find some calm in this fast-paced world, and in my dwindling habit of reading, I picked up another short book, one I managed to finish in just two hours. It was Yoko Ogawa