Book Reviews

Investors from US, China, India eye $844 million port project in Peru

The port ‌is expected to have a greater draft depth than Chancay, the northern Peru port operated by China's Cosco Shipping Ports since late 2024

Middle powers' unconvincing new statecraft

Middle powers are forging technology minilaterals to preserve their autonomy, but can such cooperation really remain independent of US and Chinese influence?

When culture wars killed democracy

Victor Sebestyen's Weimar Germany explores how cultural conflict, political extremism and weakened democratic institutions contributed to the collapse of Germany's first democracy.

Indians of Nobel descent: A celebration of laureates and their legacy

Rudrangshu Mukherjee's anthology brings together Nobel lectures and writings by Indian laureates, but its extensive focus on Rabindranath Tagore blurs the book's central purpose

The deep mind of Demis Hassabis

Written after hundreds of hours of conversations with the DeepMind founder and his associates over three years, this could well be a definitive account of AI

Batanagar: A wistful journey back in time

How a township built on the banks of the Hooghly in 1934 became an idyllic setting for colourful stories that now survive only in memory

Crisis-proofing the corporation

Through the journeys of five companies, this book offers hard-won lessons and best practices for navigating tough times and emerging stronger

Conflicts in the conservation universe

Human versus animal, development versus terrain, city versus village - this edited volume will make you think and question commonly held beliefs and assumptions about conservation

'I feel, therefore I am'

Antonio Damasio explores how the body's signals, feelings and vulnerability shape consciousness - and what this means for artificial intelligence

Crossing the wine-dark sea: Making sense of a deeply complicated past

Wilson is a longstanding champion of the classics. She has also been vocal about the need to engage more deeply with the process of interpretation and translation of the ancient texts

America's war on Muslims

A new book by Rozina Ali traces the rise of anti-Islamic sentiment in the wake of 9/11, showing how ordinary residents became targets of fear and suspicion

AI: Prometheus unbound

As the AI frenzy sweeps the globe and data centres multiply, consuming local water and power, who exactly is this new world being created for? That is the question at the heart of this book

Making room for better futures

Can political events wound us as intimately as private loss? This book explores that question, ending not on an optimistic note, but with an acceptance that we must keep making room for better future

Tomorrow's route map for India's economy

Eleven essays by noted economists and academics tackle questions concerning India's economy, society and polity, and explore pathways for the country to emerge from the prevailing turmoil

The spy who came in from the Cold War

Ben Macintyre's Redwood explores a Cold War spy defection that had deadly consequences for Iran

Fractured Communities: Adivasis and their elusive homelands in modern India

There are two versions of Khalid here - the endlessly discussed activist and the rarely acknowledged scholar who spent years researching and writing

The importance of 'blue-green' infrastructure

As the tragedy in Nepal reminds us, water and forests cannot be taken for granted. This book offers policymakers a practical guide to building resilience against extreme weather

An epic attempt at data gathering

Using data to control people is nothing new. A digital humanities professor attempts to show how data has been used from pre-history to modern times to control empires

Indian democracy in brick and mortar

The story of how the Indian Parliament was built after the capital moved from Calcutta to Delhi is a riveting account of a building that radiated power, and later became the centre of Indian democracy

Helpful boundaries for productivity

Do humans perform better when forced to work within constraints? Blending anecdotes with personal experience, this book sets out to answer the question