Page 48 - Book Review

Letter to BS: 'The Promise of India' review suffers from personal views

The author of 'The Promise of India' responds to a review of the book published in Business Standard

The truth about Koch Industries

This is a massive, and massively reported, book. But what's most impressive is its refreshing balance. Mr Leonard does not judge the Kochs; he explains them

Nostalgia unlimited

What one encounters in this slim volume is rare for a first book - a mature style, a confident voice, none of the fumbles of a younger poet's first book

More buck for the bank?

The new title and repackaging enhances sale volumes. We learn a new marketing principle with every book of Mr Bandyopadhyay

The paradoxical politician

Mr Harivansh, who belongs to Sitabdiara village, close to Chandra Shekhar's Ibrahimpatti, is well qualified to write this biography for many reasons

Kashmir from the ground up

Mr Geelani writes about the political aspirations of his own people. This is a position of great responsibility

Internet-speak isn't a bad thing

The message of Because Internet is that language is correct when sender and receiver understand a message in their shared context. That's it. It's social agreement all the way down

Book review: No clash of cultures in India during the Persianate age

Richard Eaton employs rich empirical detail to demonstrate that intellectual encounters between the Sanskrit and Persian worlds were not tied to any one religion and that the two were not hostile

The many personas of A K Ramanujan

Reading A K Ramanujan's diary is like meeting the many personas of the same person

Defusing the idea of Us vs Them

This looks to be the perfect moment for Mr King's resolutely humane book, even if the United States of the early 20th century isn't quite the perfect mirror

Ambedkar's shifting legacy

In his introduction, the author voices the Ambedkarite anger at Gandhi and communists

Behind the curve

The authors make a sincere attempt at recounting the Modi government's various economic policy initiatives in these five years

China's syndromes in India's ocean

Bertil Lintner's book The Costliest Pearl is perhaps the most comprehensive account of the contemporary geopolitics of the maritime Eastern Hemisphere

Book review: 'Blaming immigrants' busts most myths about refugees

Neeraj Kaushal uses her training as an economist not just to bust myths about immigration but recommend how things can be fixed

Recollecting a massacre

Mr Halder has used the tool of oral narratives, which is becoming more and more popular among journalists and historians, especially for documenting atrocities against the disenfranchised

Saving the world from AI?

This book is also an eye-opening tour of the contemporary method of opinion-formation as used by the Rationalists

Rewriting the rules of reporting

There are accounts here of reporting from war zones and, for example, of being embedded with the United States military during the Iraq War

Muslim politics in the age of Hindutva

Hilal Ahmed asks why Muslims have remained silent in the face of Hindutva provocations

Satire in the Sri Lankan soul

The book chronicles travels through some of the former hot spots on the island but its gaze lingers on aspects ignored by the professional war correspondent

When disorder sparks joy

Books are, after all, objects too, valued for their aesthetic and sensory affect