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Salil Misra INdian people’s struggle against the British was truly multi-faceted. Indians fought through non-cooperation, open defiance, underground violence and by courting imprisonment. There are also some notable examples where people fought the British by challenging their might in...

Rakesh Kochhar Dr Soumya Swaminathan, a respected figure in the field of medical research in the country, had headed the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for over two years before she became a household name as the chief...

Aradhika Sharma IF the Indian village perishes, India will too.” These words by Mahatma Gandhi hold great significance. As per the 2011 census, India has 6,49,481 villages, with 70 per cent of the country’s population residing in them. Villages are...

Vivek Katju Nayanima Basu’s ‘The Fall of Kabul: Despatches From Chaos’ falls into two distinct categories. The first is an engrossing account of the collapse of the Afghan Republic and the takeover of the country by the Taliban, signalled by...

Ways of Being IndianEdited by Manoj Kumar Jena.Speaking Tiger. Pages 313. Rs 499 This compilation of essays is a festschrift for Prof Renuka Singh, who retired from the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University. The writings discuss different...

Sandeep Dikshit Prof SD Muni wears his erudition lightly, making it hard for someone with passing acquaintance with his scholarship to fathom the depth of his understanding about all important turning points in India’s relations with Nepal, Bhutan, Sri...

Nonika Singh Shankar Mahadevan is a musical genius — in a way, the opening line of the ‘Foreword’ written by celebrated lyricist Javed Akhtar sets the tone. Not that those who have been following the musical graph of this...

Salil Misra Lala Lajpat Rai, the doyen of India’s freedom struggle, had many lives. One was his actual lived life which ended tragically in 1928, when he was struck down by a lathi blow of a policeman, while protesting...

In the midst of the viral rampage and global devastation and lockdown in 2020, the Book Review Literary Trust announced a short story competition. More than 50 entries were received from across India. This volume presents the best 19 stories....

Aunindyo Chakravarty Subimal Misra is difficult to read. But he can be addictive. Like the first time you smoke to be cool, and then cough, and feel sick. It has been a year since Misra died. This collection of ‘anti-stories’...

Simmi Waraich When Jean Twenge wrote her book ‘iGen’ on the current generation of kids who have grown up literally hooked to smartphones, she panned the ubiquitous technology for deleterious effects on the mental health of youth. Her book received...

Vivek Katju Shastri Ramachandaran’s ‘Beyond Binaries: The World of India and China’ is a compilation of his writings from 2008 to 2022 on China and India-China relations. He has done stints as a journalist with the Chinese state-owned media between...

The Solitude of a Shadowby Devibharathi. Translated from Tamil by A Kalyan Raman. HarperCollins. Pages 201. Rs 399 This is a story about revenge, and how treacherous and illusory the hunger for revenge can become with unavoidable tragic consequences. The...

R Umamaheshwari Padma Shri awardee Romulus Whitaker is much celebrated, documented and awarded, but much of his hitherto unknown human side comes alive unapologetically in the book (co-authored with his wife, Janaki Lenin) ‘Snakes, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll’....

We stand on the precipice of a new era, where the convergence of the artificial and the human era has altered the landscape of communication in profound ways. Archana R Singh’s book, ‘Beyond the Hashtag: A Decade of Twitter Activism...

Manoj Joshi Reams have been written on Kashmir and its beauty, but Romesh Bhattacharji brings an unusually intense view in his book. ‘Grand amateur’ is a French phrase that translates into being a ‘big fan’ in English. But the...

Shyam Saran It is fortuitous that I am reviewing Harvard professor Sugata Bose’s latest book, ‘Asia After Europe’, soon after attending a fascinating international conference on the theme, ‘Asia on the Move’. Eminent scholars gathered for the conference from...

Asia After Europeby Sugata Bose.Harvard University Press.Pages 275. Rs 699 The iconic image of Bharatmata by Tagore’s nephew in 1905 was the first product of emerging Asianism in the 20th century tracked by Sugata Bose in all its hues —...

Debashish Mukerji Noted film director Govind Nihalani’s ‘Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Ma’ (The Mother of No. 1084), released in 1998, is the story of a woman’s gradual political awakening as she probes the murder of her son, referred to by the...

Dinesh C Sharma Erratic weather patterns, extreme rainfall events, recurring droughts and flooding are all indications of climate change. The phenomenon is adversely affecting food, water and ecological systems as well as the livelihoods of farming, fishing and other communities....