Book Review

Articles

• Teresa Huhle. Review of Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II by Rebecca Herman
  20 April 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America
  by Rebecca Herman
  Oxford University Press
  2022. 320 pp. (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-753187-7
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  During World War II, the United States Army deployed aircrafts and troops in sixteen Latin American countries, utilizing existing defense sites, but more importantly, constructing numerous new bases. Focusing on Brazil, (…)

• Smith on Moseley, ’Marx’s Theory of Value in Chapter 1 of Capital: A Critique of Heinrich’s Value-Form Interpretation’
  7 September 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Marx’s Theory of Value in Chapter 1 of Capital: A Critique of Heinrich’s Value-Form Interpretation
  by Fred Moseley
  Palgrave Macmillan 2023. xxix + 167 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-3-031-13209-4.
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  Reviewed by Jason E. Smith (Art Center College of Design)
  Marx and Method
  For the past few decades, Fred Moseley, a professor of economics at Mount Holyoke College until his recent retirement in 2016, has been a leading figure in (…)

• Essential and Fascinating Facts about Indian Elections | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  17 May 2024, by M R Narayan Swamy

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  Chambers Book of Indian Election Facts
  by Kingshuk Chatterjee and Surbek Biswas
  Hachette India 2024 Pages: xii + 563; Price: Rs 699 PB ISBN : 9789357318389
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  An estimated 2.8 million of the 80 million potential women voters could not make it to the electoral rolls when India conducted its first general election after independence. The reason? These women, mostly in northern India, wished to register themselves as ‘the (…)

• 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 (…)

• Economic growth is fuelling climate change – a new book proposes ‘degrowth communism’ as the solution | Timothée Parrique
  18 March 2023

  by Timothée Parrique
  March 3, 2023
  I’m often told that degrowth, the planned downscaling of production and consumption to reduce the pressure on Earth’s ecosystems, is a tough sell. But a 36-year-old associate professor at Tokyo University has made a name for himself arguing that “degrowth communism” could halt the escalating climate emergency.
  Kohei Saito, the bestselling author of Capital in the Anthropocene, is back with a new book: Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of (…)

• Thom Loyd. Review of Iandolo, Alessandro, Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968
  31 August 2024

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  Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968
  by Alessandro Iandolo
  Cornell University Press 2022. xv + 287 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5017-6443-1.
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  Reviewed by Thom Loyd (Augusta University)
  In his 1955 novel, Flamingo Feather, the Afrikaner writer Laurens van der Post painted a sinister picture of Soviet influence in Africa, one in which the Soviet Union used whatever underhand means it (…)

• Book Review of Lise Morjé Howard, Power in Peacekeeping | Chiara Ruffa
  13 June 2020

  Reviewed by Chiara Ruffa (Uppsala University)
  Lise Morjé Howard. Power in Peacekeeping. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 274 pp. $29.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-108-45718-7
  Lise Howard’s The Power of Peacekeeping is about how peacekeeping works and how peacekeepers achieve their ends. Building on Robert Dahl’s conceptualization of power, Howard argues that peacekeepers can be effective in three ways, via persuasion, inducement, and coercion.[1] Persuasion works mainly verbally, (…)

• Uncovering Brutalities of Russian Revolution | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  3 September 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
  __0__ Russia :
  Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921
  by Antony Beevor
  Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  Pages: 576;
  Price: Rs 1,399
  __0__ There is no doubt that life under Tsar was a torture to most people in Russia. Conditions in factories were appalling and dangerous. Strikes were outlawed. If you got sacked, large numbers of impoverished peasants were ready to take your place. In any dispute with factory owners, the police always backed them. Workers slept in barracks and (…)

• Maxson on Cooley, ’The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance’
  22 June 2024
• A Doctor with a Heart | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  29 October 2022

  Reviewed by M.R. Narayan Swamy __0__
  When The Heart Speaks: Memoirs of a Cardiologist by Dr Upendra Kaul Konark Publishers Pages: 202 Price: Rs 750 __0__
  There are plenty of good doctors in this country, fortunately. Yet, it is not easy to know a doctor who is a successful professional, nationally recognized and yet a warm-hearted human being whose heart bleeds for the peaceful society that Kashmir, his home state, once was.
  Dr Upendra Kaul devotes much of the book to his more than (…)