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The Gateway of India and the beautiful Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) are the popular symbols of Mumbai. But both are structures that remind us of the city’s colonial past.

This is an intense book but then rarely does a book that indulges in architectural theory make itself so lucid and strong-footed. Setting the stage for declaring the emergence of Post-Rational Architecture, Jaimini Mehta eloquently traces the vocation’s transition over its recent two hundred and fifty year-old history.

It is common fare for books on cultural anthropology to begin with statndard kowtowing to Clifford Geetz and Edward Said. Past the introductory chapter, most often they succumb to the very pitfalls that Said and Geetz warn them about. Images of Afghanistan is cultural anthropology at its finest as it tries throughout to maintain a lived engagement and refreshing critical distance from its subject.

A s befits a book that celebrates form in its myriad manifestations, the book is accompanied by beautiful illustrations that buttress the formulations the author sets out to do.

As Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (1902-28) and then Officer on Special Duty (1928-34), John Marshall carved out an extremely important place for himself in the history of Indian archaeology.

A few months ago, I had as my co-passenger Anu Pillay, a doctor working with Medica Mondiale, in Liberia. Medica Mondiale is a world wide organization founded to assist women traumatized by rape, especially in war situations.

Alamgir Muhammad Serajuddin’s book provides a comprehensive idea of judicial activism that has taken place in south Asian regions especially India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in recent times. The methodological framework explains the concept of judicial activism and creativity and emphasizes the role of the courts as an agent of social change.

Identities and Histories is an insightful and passionate book about the emergence of women as political subjects. The book moves away from questions of nationalism, modernity and reform which framed earlier bodies of feminist history-writing in India.

In eloquent and insightful expose of economic diplomacy principles and practices, Kishan S. Rana and Bipul Chatterjee succeed in crafting a book that will stimulate and inform anyone interested in this previously opaque realm of international relations.

Migration, Remittances and Development in South Asia explores the impact of migration on development in South Asian countries and makes recommendations for benefiting more from out-migration and reducing its ill effects.

The thesis of Thenuwara’s book is ‘good money’ creates wealth and growth while ‘bad money’ would retard this—an observation made by Copernicus in 1529 A.D.

Manas Bhattacharya is a Senior Technical Specialist at the ILO. The book under review is the output of the High-Level Tripartite Meeting on the Nexus of Growth, Investment and Decent Work for South Asian Sub-region, organized by the ILO in 2007.