Page 111 - Book Reviews

Analysing what ails America

Someday, an intellectual historian cite both these books to lament that the contemporaries are not as eloquent that arose in Trump's era to combat the threats to our way of life

'Neta Abhineta' highlights Bollywood's muted and opportunist politics

This is the kind of book you may pick up at an airport but not feel guilty if you don't finish it

Panagariya's new book makes a timely case for free trade amid trade wars

It must be made required reading in the commerce ministry, the finance ministry and the PMO

The Parivar's mastermind

Kingshuk Nag, author of this biography, has looked at 2019 exclusively from the prism of identity politics

India, China: The past and future

Sheldon Pollock, the well-known scholar of Sanskrit, and Benjamin Elman, who is an expert on China, have edited an ambitious volume that seeks to analyse the recent histories of India and China

From physics to biosciences to Nobel

In the Gene Machine, we learn about the personalities of other great scientists and get an inkling of how the world of academic research works with all its complex rivalries, and collaborations

Interpreting colonialism in pre-partition Punjab through agrarian history

British rule in 19th-century Punjab was governed by the ideology of 'masculine paternalism', which 'celebrated restless energy on horseback'

How fugitive slaves exposed the idea of the 'United' States as a lie

The fugitive slave clause might have been enshrined in the Constitution, but it initially proved difficult to enforce

How does a book become a best-seller? Big data can help us know that

Despite the introduction of 100,000 new titles each year, only a tiny fraction of these attract a large enough readership to make The New York Times best-seller list

'Of Counsel': Arvind Subramanian on how RBI missed 'Draghi moment'

By not reacting faster to the 'twin balance sheet' crisis the RBI missed the opportunity to emulate the governor of the ECB's 'demarche of determination' in dealing with the European debt crisis

How Bing Crosby changed pop music

Crosby's weekly radio series, Kraft Music Hall, had made his voice as welcome in the American living room as Franklin Roosevelt's

When robots take the wheel

'Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future' is the first comprehensive analysis of what that will mean on the ground

Reddit's morality play

In book 'We Are The Nerds', author Christine Lagorio-Chafkin recounts the rise of Reddit as the oft-heard story of unexpected start-up success that then waded into controversy

City of poets

Academic readers (historians or literary critics) might find the book 'Beloved Delhi' to not be fully satisfying, and indeed having read it, one is left thirsting for more

America's interventionist zeal

In Walt's view, 'both liberal and neoconservative proponents of liberal hegemony assumed that the US could pursue this ambitious global strategy without triggering serious opposition'

'Nature's Edge' challenges complacency, alarmism about saving environment

The set of essays suggests that though the problem is global, humans must look for local experiences and solutions

Peace and war

A Chill in the Air is less action packed but more thoughtful. It covers just two years, 1939 and 1940, and captures the politics and the atmospherics from the plazas to the palazzos

What is Pakistan?

The book examines the "political mythology" around Pakistan's raison d'etre ("Why Pakistan?") and raises the question: "Who is a Pakistani?"

Amis and the 'Great' miss

One reason Amis will not be one of the "Greats" is that people mistook his characters' attitudes to be his own and assumed that the story in each book was about himself

Michelle Obama opts for empowerment over politics

Michelle Obama puts to rest any speculation about her political ambitions