Page 30 - Book Reviews

An activist's restless dialogue

Patriarchy, misogyny, and many other social ills that confronted IAS-turned activist Aruna Roy are recorded with painful honesty, in all their nuance, in her memoir

Bernie Madoff: Thoughts from the jailhouse

For every dollar he stole, Madoff seems to have generated at least one piece of regular paper

AI and tech colonialism

Madhumita Murgia's book examines AI's influence on people and the impact of AI crunching huge amounts of data on their lives

What myths tell us

Lopamudra Maitra's book explores their deeper cultural significance

World wars in Retailville

As Amazon turns 30, Clash is a timely book that explores the fierce rivalry between retail giants Amazon and Walmart, and examines their impact on the retail landscape and customers

The Nagarwala scandal, unreconstructed

Journalists Prakash Patra and Rasheed Kidwai revisit the 1971 SBI scam after reviewing declassified documents, but with underwhelming results

Spin doctoring for the rich and corrupt

All the Worst Humans, a pithy, anecdote-rich memoir by Phil Elwood, has a lot in common with those books. But it tells a story from journalism's shadow side, the realm of high-level public relations

Lone Fox in the twilight

Ruskin Bond has created a treasury of a lifetime's worth of experiences and wisdom with his writing, carving out a space in children's literature

The art of a reformer

When Rukmini Devi was seriously ill, she refused to take medicines tested on animals and opted for Chinese and Tibetan medicines, acupressure and acupuncture.

Yin, yang and assumptions

Sandeep Hasurkar explores how India and China, through contrasting governance and developmental paths, have shaped their unique trajectories on the global stage

The rise of skyscrapers

Jason M Barr presents towering buildings in a new light-as a strategic balancing act between costs and revenues to maximise profits, rather than a display of hubris

Democrat with an authoritarian streak

Bhaskar Parichha's book beautifully captures the essence of Biju Patnaik - a man both impatient and irascible, fraught with passion, and a big-picture thinker who eschewed detail

Robots in your veins

The Singularity Is Nearer follows Kurzweil's 2005 The Singularity Is Near, and several other heraldic works of tech futurism that have become sacred texts to the current generation of AI utopians

Arundhati Roy awarded UK's Pen Pinter Prize for her 'unflinching' writings

The prize, established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature in memory of Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter

Mapping the labyrinth

Abraham Jacob delves into the deep vaults of ancient Indian writings on Hinduism and its philosophical experiments, providing an easy-to-read primer on both the country and its civilisation

The limits of freedom

Joseph Stiglitz's latest book argues for a shift from capital-centric profit motives to a more inclusive and morally grounded approach in economic policy

Coping with the data flood and drought

IIT/IIM grad Nitin Seth's book offers a systematic process to harness wisdom in the deluge of data in our data-first world

Chinese history, for the CCP

Ian Johnson's book offers a lens to view China through the eyes of its people rather than through the party

Was global trade a mistake?

The late-20th-century project of integrating China into the global economy, in the hope that economic development would come hand in hand with political liberalism, feels at best misguided

Heights of ambition

Written with brio, the book nevertheless is an uncomfortable read because Cockrell ignores the distressing negative externalities of Everest Inc