Page 12 - Book Reviews

Indian women voters find their voice, step out of the electoral closet

As political parties continue to scramble to design women-friendly welfare schemes and campaign speeches, women have begun to wield their vote as an instrument of assertion

Voice of the people: Book explains why speeches matter in a democracy

Ms Gupta's selection captures not the speeches alone but the parry and thrust that goes on between the treasury and Opposition benches. CPI (M) leader, late Sitaram Yechury never disrupted parliament

Mind in Motion: A biography of Francis Crick balances his life with science

A balanced yet probing biography traces Francis Crick's brilliant scientific leaps and human flaws, revealing the mind behind DNA's discovery without fully interrogating his more troubling ideas

Girls Who Said Nothing and Everything: A journey towards selfhood

In a sense, the book is a kind of quiet revolution, reclaiming the voice and identity of Indian girls across generations

The Cell and the Soul: Anand Teltumbde's searing account of state power

Mr Teltumbde takes us through his experience inside jail and how it shattered his preconceived notions about imprisonment

Searches: Book explains how we turned to internet to understand ourselves

The strength of Searches, despite its banal moments, lies in the breathing space allowed to each digital experiment without judgments or definitive conclusions

David Szalay beats Kiran Desai to win 2025 Booker Prize for novel 'Flesh'

Using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man's life, the Booker Prize judges said of their winning choice

Tangerine: A journey of self and truth shaped by political change

It tells the story of an unexpected journey into Hindu philosophy during a period of personal turmoil

Jason Bardi's book retraces conceptual conflicts between mathematicians

The Great Math War does something most popular math books don't; it situates mathematics in the context of the people doing the mathematics - and the lives they were living outside the profession

Tested: Pat Cummins interviews 11 people to explore pressure beyond cricket

He grinds, he hits, he absorbs, he refuses to crack. Australia would eventually clinch an unlikely victory.

Fascist Yoga: How the West twisted yoga's spirit of peace and wellbeing

How yoga has been appropriated, packaged and sold in the West by people whose political views are divorced from its spirit of peace and wellbeing

The silent enemy redefines security for a world beyond the battlefield

A timely book by Arvind Gupta and Rajesh Singh expands the idea of national security beyond the military to include climate, technology, and economic vulnerabilities

When Everyone Knows: Pinker unpacks the power of shared understanding

Dr Pinker introduces another important concept, conventions, in elaborating how common knowledge works

A Sixth of Humanity: India's journey between democracy and economic growth

This narrative about India's development is described as an odyssey, perhaps because of the policy shortfalls and mishaps in the development voyage

Let My Country Awake: Miller's book omits nuances of the Ghadar movement

As Scott Miller writes in Let My Country Awake, the story of the anticolonial Ghadar movement, Indian migrant workers soon found themselves attracted to radical labour organisations

The Maker of Filmmakers: How Jagat Murari shaped filmmaking culture

The book is a compelling study of FTII's early years, revealing how great institutions can decay over time due to mismanagement and the failures of those entrusted to protect them

Waste Wars: How rich nations legally dump toxic waste on poor countries

How the rich world exploits loopholes to legally dump toxic waste on poor nations in Asia, Africa and South America

After the Spike: A bold argument for rethinking the demographic doom theory

Why a larger population is better than a smaller population with a higher quality of life

The Shortest History of AI: How the world came to love and fear it

The world has become firmly divided into two camps. One side believes that AI will solve almost all our problems pretty soon. The other worries about the emerging dangers

Wut's in a word? A new book spells out the threats to the dictionary

Fatsis provides an excellent primer on Merriam-Webster's role in the culture wars, with thorough accounts of the dictionary's approach to the N-word, the F-word, "Covid-19" and "woke"