Page 16 - Book Reviews

Inside India's polls: flaws, fraud, and the battle to save democracy

Author SY Quraishi dwells on the Model Code of Conduct and other aspects of holding elections, including the role of exit polls, media and hate speech

The Art of War and Peace: From Ethiopia to Ukraine, what's changed, endured

The book contains analytical accounts of the 20-year Afghan War, which ended with ignominious withdrawal of US and Western military forces & with the Taliban gaining control over the entire country

No, Minister: Subhash Chandra Garg's 2nd memoir mirrors tone of his first

The tenor of the second part of former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg's memoir is not dissimilar to that which pervaded his first one --and the title is a dead giveaway

Can you make peace with your smartphone? Two books explore the idea

With this book, the author calcifies some of the deposits heavy phone use has left on her soul

M S Swaminathan: Celebrating an icon of India's Green Revolution

As one reflects on Swaminathan's life and time, it is worth wondering if India could produce towering figures like him today

Superbloom: Nicholas Carr book says more communication isn't always better

The real threat of AI and LLMs lie not in job loss, but in corporations using them to create endless loops of content tailored to everyone's smallest needs, chaining us to our devices more than ever

Jacinda Ardern's memoir is a moving account of a career built with care

The former New Zealand Prime Minister's memoir is nothing like a political manifesto. It is an assured and often moving account of a career built with care - though not without frequent self-doubt

India in Flux offers up new ways to think about complex challenges ahead

Few could have played the role Shankar Acharya did-navigating political, fiscal, and global pressures with clarity and conviction

A Billion Butterflies: This book drops truth bombs on climate change

How an old deal over a supercomputer explains the politics behind climate science today

Scott Anderson captures US' hubris, Iran's revolution in exceptional detail

For most Americans, the hostage crisis was the revolution's defining event

Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada: Shahu Patole's book on the taste of casteism

Food is a critical part of any culture. It locates you. It shapes how you're seen and how you see yourself. It carries histories, hierarchies, and inheritances

The voice of farmers: How Subramaniam backed Swaminathan's seed dream

How C Subramaniam's political backing helped MS Swaminathan secure funds for hybrid seed trials, setting the stage for India's Green Revolution and agricultural self-reliance

'Scientist of the soil': New book reveals untold stories of MS Swaminathan

New book 'The Man Who Fed India' reveals untold stories of MS Swaminathan, chronicling his journey, personal life, Green Revolution role, and lifelong service to Indian farming

Marcus Du Sautoy's book demystifies maths, builds bonds with humanities

How creativity is intimately connected to mathematics, even when the artists themselves may not be fully aware of it

The CIA Book Club reveals how the West won minds behind the Iron Curtain

How the CIA, instead of pursuing scandalous swashbuckling interventions, smuggled books to weaken the Iron Curtain and offer Eastern Europe a glimpse of an alternative future

Mehran Gul's debut book decodes the innovation ecosystem through its people

We see the United States as the source of just about all the technologies that define modern life, and most of the companies that created them are based there. But is that changing

The Trial That Shook Britain: How a court-martial led to India's freedom

The tactical contradictions that doomed earlier revolutionary movements found their dramatic resolution in Bose's audacious gamble with the INA

The Conscience Network: Fighting the emergency and the US battlefront

The element of equivalence between then and now is probed delicately but bravely by this book which revisits the Emergency and the resistance to it from a new angle

Growth must mean jobs, value addition and economic stability: Sitharaman

At the launch of A World in Flux, FM Nirmala Sitharaman said India's top priority is quality growth focused on jobs, value addition and sustainability

A World in Flux: Sitharaman flags need to reshape institutions for present

At the launch of 'A World in Flux', Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said multilateral institutions are now in limbo and stressed the urgent need to reshape them for today's rapidly evolving world