Tag: Books and literature

Book review: Coffee With Hitler by Charles Spicer – polite society v the Nazis

Alexander Larman When Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, public reaction in Britain was not that of unalloyed horror. Instead, it lay somewhere between disinterest, snobbish, if inaccurate, contempt (“the man’s a house painter!”), and, in some circles, quiet satisfaction that a vigorous reformer had shaken up his country in an apparently effective and… Read More Book review: Coffee With Hitler by Charles Spicer – polite society v the Nazis

Dilip

‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisis

In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen style themselves as heralds of some very bad news: societal collapse on a global scale is inevitable, and those who manage to survive the mass death and crumbling of the world as we know it will have to live in drastically transformed circumstances. According to… Read More ‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisis

Dilip

Simon Leys: The View from the Bridge. His lectures on Learning, Reading, Writing and Going Abroad and Staying Home (1996)

First posted August 4, 2018 In 1996, Professor Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys) presented the ABC Boyer Lectures. Subsequently published under the title The View from the Bridge the lectures were serialised in four parts in China Heritage Quarterly with the permission of the author. The first lecture was called Learning (some introductory paragraphs are given below; but the link will… Read More Simon Leys: The View from the Bridge. His lectures on Learning, Reading, Writing and Going Abroad and Staying Home (1996)

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Simon Leys: The art of interpreting non-existent inscriptions written in invisible ink on a blank page. Book review

History might have been very different if the original leaders of the Chinese Communist Party had not been decimated by Chiang Kai-shek’s White Terror of 1927, or expelled by their own comrades in subsequent party purges. They were civilised and sophisticated urban intellectuals, upholding humanistic values, with cosmopolitan and open minds, attuned to the modern… Read More Simon Leys: The art of interpreting non-existent inscriptions written in invisible ink on a blank page. Book review

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Alfred McCoy: To Govern the Globe – World Orders and Catastrophic Change

Reviewed by Brian Tanguay What factors contribute to the rise and fall of empires, and what characteristics distinguish an empire from a world order? In To Govern the Globe, American historian Alfred W. McCoy seeks to answer these questions by surveying seven hundred years of human history, from 1347 when the Black Death reached Europe and… Read More Alfred McCoy: To Govern the Globe – World Orders and Catastrophic Change

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Adrija Roychowdhuri: Why a majority of Muslims opposed Partition and stayed on in India

A standard narrative exists about the role of Muslims during the Partition in India, which talks about how the Muslim community, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League, stood for the two-nation theory and demanded the Partition of India. Historical documents, however, suggest that a majority of the Muslims opposed the Partition and… Read More Adrija Roychowdhuri: Why a majority of Muslims opposed Partition and stayed on in India

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Akhtar Balouch: Why did Qurratulain Hyder leave Pakistan for India?

NB: Today we learn the sad news of Janab Akhtar Balouch’s passing. I have not been able to find an obituary and am posting some of his writings as a tribute. This is the first article of his that I posted: Daya Ram Gidumal of Sindh. Here are some more, including a fascinating account of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan’s assassination in… Read More Akhtar Balouch: Why did Qurratulain Hyder leave Pakistan for India?

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Book review. The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, by Mark Lilla

Reviewed by Patrick Keane To begin with full disclosure: I am in essential agreement with the now famous or infamous salvo Mark Lilla fired off shortly after the publication of the book here under review. I refer of course to his widely discussed and hotly debated op-ed, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” which appeared in… Read More Book review. The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, by Mark Lilla

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Andha Yug by Dharamvir Bharati (1953): Theatre of Roots

The story of the Kurukshetra war echoes the horrors of Partition in the play. In Dharamvir Bharati’s pathbreaking Hindi play, Andha Yug (1953), the story of the Kurukshetra war echoes the horrors of Partition, both encapsulated in the cry, “What is this peace you have given us, god”. Andha Yug achieved iconic status: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru watched a production… Read More Andha Yug by Dharamvir Bharati (1953): Theatre of Roots

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