Mainstream Weekly

Fat and Cooked: Sustainability for You and the Planet

Devdatt P. Dubhashi — 2012-08-17T09:31:44Z

BOOK REVIEW
The Energy Glut: The Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World by Ian Roberts with Phil Edwards; Zed Books, London and New York; 2010.
What does obesity have to do with climate change? Everything, according to Ian Roberts, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. People are fatter and the planet is getting cooked—both because of the over-use of fossil fuels and a transportation system based on it.
Obesity is very much in the news (…)

- 2012

Correcting Popular Misconceptions of Marx

Devdatt P. Dubhashi — 2011-08-20T19:53:34Z

BOOK REVIEW
Why Marx was Right by Terry Eagleton; Yale University Press; 2011.
The financial crisis and the Great Recession seemed to present, for many of us, a good opportunity to reconsider the current economic, political and social system and alternatives to it. However, mention the “M” word, and it's a non-starter. No matter how apolitical a person otherwise is, they seem to have a firm opinion on Marx—he's authoritarian, he advocates violence.... he's passe. Professional economists (…)

- 2011

Destructive Zombie and Return of Karl Marx

Devdatt P. Dubhashi — 2010-12-12T01:44:51Z

BOOK REVIEW
Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx; by Chris Harman; Bookmarks Publications; 2009.
Marx compared capital to a vampire, that ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks'. For Chris Harman, as pictured on the cover of the book, it is better compared to the mindless, destructive zombie, 'seemingly dead when it comes to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings, but capable of sudden spurts of activity (…)

- 2010

Review Article: Financial Crisis and How to Tackle It

Devdatt P. Dubhashi — 2009-03-15T15:27:20Z

The Subprime Solution by Robert J. Shiller; Princeton University Press; 2008.
The Origin of Financial Crises by George Cooper; Random House; 2008.
The Credit Crunch by Graham Turner; Pluto Press; 2008.
The tsunami of the financial crisis that struck the world in 2008 caught most economists by total surprise, and has now generated a large outpou-ring of analysis of what went wrong. The books under review have three very different takes on it. Roughly speaking, one may characterise them (…)

- March 2009