Page 70 - Book News

Book review: Ramachandra Guha's meticulous reconstruction of Gandhi's life

The detail in Ramachandra Guha's magisterial biography occasionally comes at the cost of interpretation and meaning

A prime reader on the Indian economy

A review of 'Pre-Liberalisation to GST - Essays in Honour of Raj Kapila'

Why our freedom is in danger

Mr Mounk uses a number of case studies to demonstrate how electoral democracy has, through legitimate means, brought to power populists who claim to speak in the name of people

Hate crimes and healing

Again and again, the essays in the book return to a single question - can a nation so fractured by hate crimes, encounter killings and communal deaths ever be made whole again by love?

The corruption poser

Dr Basu presents the issues through the prism of economic theories - using game theory in abundance, but at a philosophical level these have tremendous resonance in Indian society

The real risks of the Trump presidency

Mr Lewis himself seems to swing from civic optimism to abject nihilism, sometimes within the same perfect sentence

Billion Dollar Whale: Superbly reported book on swindle of the millennium

The story of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fraud highlights the shocking power of those who learn to con the masters of the international finance community, writes Rahul Jacob

How an Indian food writer broke traditions to amass a huge following in US

In his deeply personal debut cookbook, "Season," Nik Sharma tells his story as a gay immigrant reconciling his past and present

Politics in power sector reforms

Notwithstanding reform efforts since the early 1990s, the sector continues to experience difficulties

AI and the human factors

Dismissing fears stoked by the likes of Musk and Hawking, the authors argue that AI, for the foreseeable future, is unlikely to reach a stage where a robot uprising will defeat humans in a large-scale

Jobs: Universal basic problem

India simply isn't generating enough jobs to absorb the surplus labour from agriculture, says Raghavan Jagannathan

A congressional death match

In her absorbing, scrupulously researched book The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman uncovers the brawls, stabbings, pummelings and duel threats that occurred among US congressmen

Giving voice to Homer's women

Unfortunately, Barker's voices are dissonant and unpersuasive

'The Last Englishmen' review: Baker recreates forgotten worlds of the Raj

Deborah Baker's awesome micro-research over a variety of subjects leaves you with much to think about

Idol pursuits

The power of the book's narrative, however, is not only from the startling turn of events but also from the expertise S Vijay Kumar brings to it

Evaluating PM Modi's strategic & economic performance: Sizzle turns fizzle

In this book, Bharat Karnad looks inwards at the trajectory Indian politics and policymaking has followed since PM Narendra Modi came to power in 2014

Much ado about democracy

The book takes readers on a roller-coaster ride about the past episodes of democratic failures interspersed with a whole variety of philosophical arguments

'Jihadis, faujis and Chinese' in PoK

This is a pioneering work on Azad Kashmir, which Indians prefer to call Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), by a Pakistani journalist who made eight visits for her fieldwork over 2016 and 2017

Four good men

Ms Goodwin here explicitly takes up the formation of her subjects' characters, and how their most notable qualities equipped them to lead the country during trying times

Rana Haddad's debut novel shows a feminist literary voice from West Asia

Some have likened the novel's plot twists to a Shakespearean comedy but Indian readers may find this story of lost-and-found siblings and family feuds closer to Bollywood