Page 20 - Bs Reads

The contours of displacement

A collection of essays intricately weaves the stories of a Kashmiri family and their exodus from the Valley

The Raj and Hajj management

This is an outstanding contribution to a complex and under-researched aspect of imperialist rule as it was shaped in a specific area of colonial hegemony

Mixed feelings about identity

In Both, Not Half explores the diverse facets of mixed identity, going beyond individual experiences

The Indo-Japanese imperative

Packed with compelling anecdotes, data, and insights, Rajaram Panda's book is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Indo-Japanese relations

The rights of the Nicobar forests

A collection of essays is a timely attempt at ringing alarm bells over the proposed project port project in the ecologically fragile Galathea Bay of Nicobar island

Outsiders in the mainstream

Michiko Kakutani's book dips into some compelling cases of outsiders driving change in the world

The rigours of resistance

In a milieu where civil society is demonised by the power establishment, Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia's book is a successful attempt at humanising the dehumanised

A lesser-known history of maths

Madhava's work serves to make point that complex mathematics belongs to all people and all cultures in all periods, and that to dismiss historical work as ethnomathematics is to express a prejudice

In the footsteps of Ravana

The book traces his reign to the Kumana region using a mix of archaeological finds and the abundant regional legends and folklore around him

Anatomy of a democratic coup

How did the Weimar Republic, Germany's first democracy, fall to the Nazis? Takeover reprises the dramatic six months before Hitler's rise

Why the global league of autocrats thrives

One of the great failures of neoliberalism was to assume that all good things would go together

1984: What the women remember

Sanam Sutirath Wazir's The Kaurs of 1984 brings alive the stories of Sikh women caught in the spiral of politics and violence that engulfed Punjab and spread to Sikhs outside state that bloody year

An amble through a forgotten India

Before I Forget is a rare glimpse into the gentle soul of one of India's most accomplished actors and directors, and a look into an era that is now forgotten

How to age wisely

This is a sobering thought in a world where people have the technological means for instant communication but are perennially busy so they make little time to nurture relationships

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