Page 108 - Book Reviews

Contours of the 'Asian Century'

The questions raised by the author's stimulating book highlight his deft weaving together of technology, geopolitics, economics, globalisation - and the decline and rise of great powers

China & India: The threat of populist nationalism

An exclusive excerpt from former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan's latest book

Islam's great divide

Mr McHugo is a liberal British scholar of Islamic studies, currently a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Syrian Studies at St Andrews University

Mistakes that led to Trump

Tomasky writes, "is the father of the modern political party, and therefore in some sense the man we might call the godfather of polarisation"

The daunting task of translating sacred texts four times Mahabharata's size

Many stories in The Bhagavata Purana uphold the spirit of the Vaishanava tradition of universal love

India's secondary sex

What kind of society are we that we consistently, deliberately - and systematically - fail our women?

The 1984 riots: 'An excavation of memory'

The riot creeps in like a mishap that ruins a thoroughly enjoyable trip, and disorients everyone who is a part of it, says Radhika Oberoi

Unmasking British rule in India

Ms Desai has built her well-documented narrative in six chapters and marshalled evidence from the British-appointed Hunter Committee inquiry into the massacre

Whose goddess is it, anyway?

Structured as a collection of 15 essays that look at Navaratri through the ages and across the social spectrum, it traces the emergence of the festival in early Sanskrit texts

The two faces of nonalignment

The book itself shows that Indira Gandhi refrained from lecturing Washington on Vietnam because only the US could give India the food it needed

'Real India' from the top down

Mr Sharma charts the rise of the future prime minister through his third consecutive win in the Gujarat Assembly election of 2012.

Chris Christie's testament

If Trump had only listened to him, Christie writes, he would have fired James B Comey, then director of the FBI, at the start of his administration

The Twice-Born review: Aatish Taseer tries to eulogise Brahminical culture

This book, as Taseer explains in the very first chapter, was a product of his father and Pakistani politician Salmaan Taseer's assassination in January 2011

Anti-Facebook manifesto, by early investor

A tech company founded on creating human connection is now ripping American society apart and compromising our civic foundation, though not because it has overtly wicked intent

A victim's comeback

Ms Murad's prose describes atrocities that have now become part of the refugee-crisis discourse

The perfect textbook

The tale is instructive because to practically all North Indians the people who live in the five states that comprise peninsular India - the South - are kalay Madrassi

The globetrotting tax expert

The epilogue reveals the ability of a consummate author to express himself far beyond a writer of economics treatises

All our yesterdays

Fenby's history covers 13 months from June 1947 to June 1948, a period that, he says, 'really did change the world, shaping much of it in a form that gives the period a lasting relevance for our day'

A story of self determination

In 1973, after a protest, members of the Oglala Sioux tribe march to the cemetery where their ancestors were buried

Ex-NYT executive editor Abramson's book charts journalism's stormy seas

The book tells the story in 13 chapters, three on each protagonist-company and one on Facebook