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  • Review of Bennett, M. Todd, Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency | Chuck Steele
    11 August 2024

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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    Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency
    by M. Todd Bennett
    Columbia University Press 2023. 384 pp ISBN 978-0-231-19347-4 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-19346-7
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    Reviewed by Chuck Steele
    Despite the centrality of the ocean research vessel Glomar Explorer to this fascinating story, this is not a book intended for an audience of environmental historians. It is, however, a first-rate (…)

  • Review of The Rafale Deal: Flying Lies? by Ravi Nair and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta | Shubham Sharma
    13 May 2023

    Book Review:
    by Shubham Sharma
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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 and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
    2022. pp 532 HB: Rs 795
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    Until recently, India, like other Western-capitalist countries, lacked a robust domestic ‘military-industrial complex’ (MIC). It could be defined as the presence of a defence procurement mechanism which involves a transactional nexus between private group(s) that (…)

  • A Gripping Saga of India
    17 May 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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    The Scam That Shook a Nation: The Nagarwala Scandal
    by Prakash Patra, Rasheed Kidwai
    HarperCollins India
    Pages: xi + 263; Price: Rs 399
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    It is a story that has been told, literally, a million times. But when Prakash Patra and Rahseed Kidwai, two extremely capable journalists, recap the story with their penchant for thorough research, it becomes a book you just cannot put down.
    The sensational incident which the book (…)

  • Reading Arundhati Roy Against My Will | Disha
    22 May, by Disha

    For most of my life I have read political writing with a sense of duty rather than desire. I read to stay informed, not to feel changed. The books I encountered often seemed to assume a reader who could absorb weight without needing warmth, and I finished them more knowledgeable, but no more connected to the world they described.
    When I picked up the memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me, I expected the same. I did not expect the book to reach the private interior of my reluctance or alter the (…)

  • Revisiting the 1943 Bengal Famine | Arup Kumar Sen
    19 July 2024, by Arup Kumar Sen

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
    The Bengal famine of 1943 has found expressions in the academic discourse over the years. Amartya Sen’s Poverty and Famines (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981) and Paul R. Greenough’s Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-44 (Oxford University Press, 1982) are classic books on the subject. Madhusree Mukerjee’s more recent book titled Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (Basic (…)

  • Alice Oates. Review of Grossman, Sara J., Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy
    15 March 2024

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
    by Alice Oates
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    Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy
    by Sara J. Grossman
    Duke University Press 2023. Illustrations. 264 pp. (paper), ISBN 978-1-4780-2502-3 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4780-2005-9
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    Immeasurable Weather is the story of “how settler colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriachal power informed, upheld, and bolstered meteorological science and data (…)

  • Reclaiming a Revolutionary: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani; Interrogating Historiography | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
    22 May 2021, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra

    BOOK REVIEW
    Geraldine Forbes—Lost Letters and Feminist History—The Political Friendship of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2020.
    review by Deepti Mehrotra *
    Early in 1920, 47-year-old Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and 50-year-old Mohandas K. Gandhi pledged to write each other at least one letter per day. The intensity of their correspondence, and friendship, lasted barely one year. During this time a few hundred letters passed between them, for (…)

  • Khushwant Singh was far-sighted saw fascism rising / Dipankar Gupta’s book of Lockdown | Humra Quraishi
    7 July 2023, by Humra Quraishi

    6 July 2023
    Khushwant Singh was far-sighted. Over 10 years back, before he passed away in 2014, he was worried about — RISE OF FASCISM in the country.
    Khushwant Singh’s worries were several in terms of the political scenario in the country. He would talk and write of the communal poisoning spreading around, and the rise of the fascist forces, spreading fear.
    Khushwant Singh brought to the fore this vital fact: ‘Don’t overlook the fact that before Jinnah had come up with the two-nation (…)

  • Trump Marries Republican Politics to Authoritarianism | M.R. Narayan Swamy
    12 July 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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    Democracy Awakening:
    Notes on the State of America
    by Heather Cox Richardson
    W H Allen/Penguin Random House
    2024
    Pages: xvii + 286, ISBN-10 ? : ? 0593652983
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    Is Donald Trump mad? Yes and no.
    It is easy

  • All-encompassing Economic History of Indian Peasantry
    26 December 2009, by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay

    BOOK REVIEW
    Peasant History of Late Pre-Colonial and Colonial India by Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri; Pearson Education, New Delhi; 2008; pp. xxv+939.
    It is always difficult to review a book by a teacher. Such a review always tends to become a tribute rather than a critical analysis of the content and arguments of the book. And I will not even try to pretend that I have been able to avoid that pitfall here, for I learnt my first lessons in the economic history of India from Professor Binay (…)