book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized

Book Review: A JOURNEY

Apologia for a war Given that 92,000 copies were sold in the first four days, Tony Blair has felled a large number of trees to argue a case that is seriously flawed. By sheer coincidence, as soon as the reviewer finished the book, the new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband came out with a categorical statement that the Iraq war was “wrong, wrong, wrong”. I had always thought that Tony Blair was really Tory Blair. I felt vindicated after reading the book written in the style of Christian apologetics to defend a position, not primarily to narrate what happened, how and why. (more…)

November 10th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized |

book-reviews, books, politics, uncategorized

Book Review: JINNAH AND TILAK: Comrades in the Freedom Struggle

By A.G. Noorani Oxford University Press, Karachi Pages 465, Rs. 795 Comrades in the Freedom Struggle      The book under review by the eminent scholar- cum- advocate A. G.  Noorani was published in Pakistan and it will attract much attention and debate in India. Noorani's thesis, argued with formidable skill and compelling documentary support, is that Jinnah started as a secular nationalist. The British considered him one among their most formidable opponents. Gandhi did not treat Jinnah courteously. Jinnah was opposed to Gandhi's political philosophy and importing of religion into politics. Yet, Jinnah showed remarkable tact and patience and tried hard to work with the Congress till the Hindu fundamentalists in the Congress made it impossible for him to remain there with dignity. (more…)

July 07th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, politics, uncategorized |

book-reviews, books, international-affairs

Book Review: THE INHERITANCE

Difficult Legacy There is a frank admission that Bush messed it up. There is hope that Obama will undo the mess if he can get his act right. Is he getting it right? DAVID E. SANGER is eminently qualified to write about what President Barack Hussein Obama has inherited from his predecessor. As the chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times, Sanger accompanied President George W. Bush on his official visits abroad and has had access to many of the world leaders Bush met with during his tenure. Candidate Obama's words "Yes, we can", symbolising the paradigm shift he would make as President, resonated not only through the United States but also the rest of the world. The subtitle of the book reads The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. (more…)

October 29th, 2009 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs |

book-reviews, books, international-affairs

Book Review : JINNAH : India-Partition Independence

As I completed the enjoyable navigation through the ponderous, pompous, and pontificatory prose of Jaswant Singh, I was reminded of three other famous writers: Oscar Wilde: The only duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Benedetto Croce: All historiography is contemporary historiography. Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. To put the last quotation in context, Voltaire is said to have said this to Helvetius after his book De l’esprit was burned in 1759.That was 30 years before the French Revolution began. One wonders whether Gujarat under Narendra Modi is in a pre-Revolutionary situation. (more…)

October 04th, 2009 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs |

book-reviews

Book Review : The Lexus and the Olive tree: Understanding Globalisation by Thomas L. Friedman

Published by Anchor Books, 2000; $15, pages 490. GLOBALISATION is impacting more and more on our lives, for better or worse, and there are so many books on this. Yet most of us find it difficult to get a grip on it. What is globalisation? Is it the process of creating a global village or is it an instrument for global pillage? Thomas L. Friedman, 49, twice Pulitzer Prize winner for his articles as a columnist for The New York Times, has a refreshing and lucid style. Francis Fukuyama, whose The End of History was once acclaimed as a seminal work on the post-Cold War world, has high praise for Friedman's book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalisation: "A powerful volume that comes as close as anything we now have to a definition of the real character of the new world order." (more…)

March 05th, 2009 | category:book-reviews |

book-reviews, books, uncategorized

Book Review: Hannah Arendt and International Relations

Edited by Antony F.Lang, Jr. and John Williams Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2005, pages 236 There are nine papers in all, written by six scholars, two of whom double up as editors. All the writers are university teachers, with four of them teaching International Relations(IR). Hannah Arendt never wrote on IR as such. But, the editors believe that it is possible to gain insights of value in IR from philosophers even if they do not directly theorize on IR. So far no attempt has been made to find out to what extent the ideas of Arendt can be invoked into IR. This book is the first such attempt. (more…)

March 05th, 2009 | category:book-reviews, books, uncategorized |