Page 114 - Book Reviews

How an Indian food writer broke traditions to amass a huge following in US

In his deeply personal debut cookbook, "Season," Nik Sharma tells his story as a gay immigrant reconciling his past and present

Politics in power sector reforms

Notwithstanding reform efforts since the early 1990s, the sector continues to experience difficulties

AI and the human factors

Dismissing fears stoked by the likes of Musk and Hawking, the authors argue that AI, for the foreseeable future, is unlikely to reach a stage where a robot uprising will defeat humans in a large-scale

Jobs: Universal basic problem

India simply isn't generating enough jobs to absorb the surplus labour from agriculture, says Raghavan Jagannathan

A congressional death match

In her absorbing, scrupulously researched book The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman uncovers the brawls, stabbings, pummelings and duel threats that occurred among US congressmen

Giving voice to Homer's women

Unfortunately, Barker's voices are dissonant and unpersuasive

'The Last Englishmen' review: Baker recreates forgotten worlds of the Raj

Deborah Baker's awesome micro-research over a variety of subjects leaves you with much to think about

Idol pursuits

The power of the book's narrative, however, is not only from the startling turn of events but also from the expertise S Vijay Kumar brings to it

Evaluating PM Modi's strategic & economic performance: Sizzle turns fizzle

In this book, Bharat Karnad looks inwards at the trajectory Indian politics and policymaking has followed since PM Narendra Modi came to power in 2014

Much ado about democracy

The book takes readers on a roller-coaster ride about the past episodes of democratic failures interspersed with a whole variety of philosophical arguments

'Jihadis, faujis and Chinese' in PoK

This is a pioneering work on Azad Kashmir, which Indians prefer to call Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), by a Pakistani journalist who made eight visits for her fieldwork over 2016 and 2017

Four good men

Ms Goodwin here explicitly takes up the formation of her subjects' characters, and how their most notable qualities equipped them to lead the country during trying times

Rana Haddad's debut novel shows a feminist literary voice from West Asia

Some have likened the novel's plot twists to a Shakespearean comedy but Indian readers may find this story of lost-and-found siblings and family feuds closer to Bollywood

The rule of law through 'thick' and 'thin'

The book does not offer real-life examples, bar the odd reference to individual cases, which makes it somewhat academic to the lay reader

The marketing of Coal India

CIL, thus, practically leads a double life - under the spotlights at Mumbai and away from it in the mines that dot mostly eastern India

Citi's eternal moral hazard

Anyone interested in banking will find this book engrossing

Inside crazytown

If this book has a single point to drive home, it is that the president of the United States is a congenital liar

'A God in Exile' review: Raghu Rai captures the many moods of Dalai Lama

Introductory section concludes with a picture of Jawaharlal Nehru with a young Dalai Lama at Teen Murti House in 1964 just before Nehru died

The ascent of Big History

Unlike conventional history, which deals with relatively small chunks of humanity divided by nation and sub nation, Big History deals with the entire species

Telling it like it is

As a history of Silicon Valley, this account largely omits a discussion of either Microsoft - which explains the 10-year gap from 1984 to 1994 - and Amazon