By Samuel Helfont

Midway through the book, the author sheds light on how a series of networks were built by the Iraqi regime during the war to appeal to the western world against US actions in Iraq. Numerous political cells were created by Baathist supporters of Saddam to mobilize people in cities like New Jersey


Reviewed by: Fazzur Rahman Siddiqui
Edited by Kingshuk Chatterjee

The three essays in the final section centre on war and diplomacy. Shantanu Chakrabarti discusses the writings of Hiranmoy Ghoshal, who spent considerable years of his life in Poland. These writings include Ghoshal’s ‘eyewitness account’ of the German invasion of Poland during the Second World War


Reviewed by: Manu V. Devadevan
By Yalidy Matos

According to Matos, white socialization teaches white individuals about their obligations, anticipated behaviours, assigned roles, and strategies to preserve the exclusive nature of their community. She explains that the moral choice that whiteness affords (which ‘not all racial groups have’) is the choice to either continue to follow and strengthen a system that is structured on white supremacy or challenge it.


Reviewed by: Mallika Joseph
By Christophe Jaffrelot

For Jaffrelot, Modi’s personalization of power coupled with identifying the cosmopolitan origins of the Nehru-Gandhi family in particular allowed him to claim ownership to being a victim of elite politics along with the common people. This ‘national-populism’ for Jaffrelot is undergirded by a mimetic syndrome wherein Modi successfully managed to create a discourse of unanimism—the idea that the people and the leader are one and the same. This ‘Moditva’


Reviewed by: Surajkumar Thube
Edited by Manu Goswami and Mrinalini Sinha

The rest of the essays in Part II of the book are rooted in different aspects of elections. ‘Election Time’ by Anupama Roy and Ujjwal Kumar Singh reiterates elections as an expression of popular sovereignty, highlights the significance of the Election Commission of India (ECI). Election time also serves as a site of electoral morality in the Model Code of Conduct (MCC)


Reviewed by: Malavika Menon