Jug Suraiya

One of the many things wrong with growing old is that people we once admired become what is called past their prime. Pretty girls put on weight; batsmen go out for a duck; singers keep clearing their throat and sipping water or whatever; columnists recycle news and views . . . Sachin Tendulkar is an exception…


Reviewed by: Kiran Doshi
Blaze Ginsberg

For those of us born before the age of television, we can only rue the afternoons spent indoors reading or outdoors playing with friends instead of being regaled by the adventures of SpongeBob Square Pants. But for the last couple of generations, staring at a screen, whether it is a television set, a handheld gaming device,..


Reviewed by: Ram K. Vepa
Kishore Chatterjee

In his autobiography Nirad Chaudhuri describes how on his wedding night he asked his young bride Amiya if she had heard of Beethoven. To his relief she had indeed heard of the composer and even spelt out the name correctly. This anecdote may not seem amusing any longeranxious Bengali babus…


Reviewed by: Partho Datta
Dilip D'Souza

There are not many Indian authors who had the courage and confidence to write about the United States of America despite the fact that many young and not-so-young men, and young and no-so-young women in post-Independent Indiaespecially from the 1950s and 1960s onwardshave literally grown up loving American popular fiction, popular music and popular cinema (Hollywood).


Reviewed by: Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
Shormishtha Panja

Divided into four sections, each one with an introduction, this book is with five essays on the renaissance in Europe, four on the Indian subcontinent, and two each on eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe and ‘Art and Philosophy’, the scope of this book is quite vast even if it is largely Eurocentric…


Reviewed by: G.J.V. Prasad
Shanta Acharya

Reviewing Shanta Acharyas previous collection of poetry, Shringara (2006), I had called it a sheaf of grief, an elegiac volume about the loss of loved ones, through which a rawness of the pain still throbbed. In the present volume, her fifth collection, we see her emerging out of that phase with the help of those precious resources…


Reviewed by: Ketaki Kushari Dyson
Jamsheed Marker

When a man has spent as long as Jamsheed Marker did at the highest levels of diplomacyhe was Ambassador of Pakistan in ten countries with another nine concurrent accreditationsthe memoirs are bound to be of considerable interest. The author brings much erudition and a felicitous writing skill to the task aided…


Reviewed by: T.C.A. Rangachari
Kalayani Shankar

At a time when India is seen, rightly or wrongly, as intensely engaged in an effort to get closer and closer to the United States, it is useful to read this book by the wellknown journalist and author Kalyani Shankar. The principal theme is how Indira Gandhi was crafty enough to outwit Richard Nixon, himself a superb practitioner…


Reviewed by: K.P. Fabian
Anand Chandavarkar

This is another book on Keynes and still not another book. It offers fascinating insights by a Keynes buff. This book has several thoughtful pieces on what Keynes wrote, the works on Keynes and also aspects of Keynes’s work that have not been highlighted. It relooks at Keynes’s contribution to different…


Reviewed by: Anu Kumar
Salil Tripathi

This has been a tumultuous decade for the academic study of India. In his Offence: The Hindu Case, Salil Tripathi provides a timely overview of the growing censorship and harassment that scholars working on India have faced. Not a pretty sight to behold: people have felt the need to ban books and terrorize authors…


Reviewed by: Jakob De Roover
Anthony Parel

This earnest and thoughtful volume is invaluable, not least because it brought back to the present reviewer the presence of Professor K.J. Shah, the first philosopher who connected emerging approaches to purushartha, including his own, to Gandhijis thought and praxis. Parel himself discusses in the introduction K.J. Shahs work on Gandhi.


Reviewed by: Rohini Mokashi Punekar
N. Shanthamohan

Apart from the fact that the major river systems in our countryIndus, Ganges and Brahmaputratraverse our neighbouring countries, almost all perennial rivers of India flow through more than one state. The disputes on account of the international rivers are understandable; however, conflicts around sharing…


Reviewed by: V.S. Vyas
John R. McNeill

The slight sarcasm added in the subtitle to Environmental History,as if nature existed, triggers questions for the reader of this volume. Why as if? Are we to be taken en route through a landscape of perceptions and constructions, or are we brought to see the raw realities behind benign conservation regimes?…


Reviewed by: Gunnel Cederlof
Gautam Sengupta

Since the inception of the discipline, there has been a close link between archaeology and the state. This was the case since the early decades of the nineteenth century when archaeology was both an imperial project and a military endeavour, often an offshoot of colonial policies and which included their relationships…


Reviewed by: Supriya Varma
Douglas E. Haynes

This book ventures into previously nexplored areas of South Asian history, indicating the exciting possibilities of research in social and economic history. Consumption in South Asia begins with the observation that The history of consumption is not an identifiable sub-field among South Asianists, nor are there any individual historians…


Reviewed by: Kanakalatha Mukund