Alfred McCoy: The Future According to Trump / Julian Borger: The Putinization of US foreign policy has arrived in Venezuela

Ending the American Dream by 2029? For writers, the future has long been a tricky terrain. While the past can prove unsettling and the present uncomfortable, the future seems to free the mind from reality’s restraints and let the imagination soar. Yet it has also proven full of political pitfalls. The ‘Putinization’ of US foreign… Read More Alfred McCoy: The Future According to Trump / Julian Borger: The Putinization of US foreign policy has arrived in Venezuela

4th January 20264th January 2026 Dilip

Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday

This is no book; who touches this touches a man: Walt Whitman Zweig and his second wife, Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann, committed suicide on February 22, 1942; the day after he submitted the manuscript of this book to the publisher. His farewell message read: I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect… Read More Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday

2nd January 20262nd January 2026 Dilip

Begum Khaleda Zia, the walking contradiction

Netra News obituary for the first female prime minister of Bangladesh She became only the second woman ever elected prime minister in a Muslim-majority country, leading a party that liked to cast itself as the centre-right antidote to the Awami League’s secular nationalism. By the time her Bangladesh Nationalist Party returned to power in 2001,… Read More Begum Khaleda Zia, the walking contradiction

1st January 2026 Dilip

Jairus Banaji on his book A Marxist Mosaic

Interview with the author November 11, 2025 There is a whole agenda out there waiting for a younger generation of the left to lay out in a rigorous and comprehensive way. But that is an agenda that will simply collapse if it subscribes to “orthodoxies” and other forms of intellectual snobbery. Historical materialism as Marx… Read More Jairus Banaji on his book A Marxist Mosaic

28th December 2025 Dilip

Shashank Shekhar Sinha wins the 2025 Karwaan Book Award for ‘Casting the Buddha’

NB: Shashank is a former student of history at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi. He can be assured that his erstwhile teachers are very proud of him. DS The 2025 Karwaan Book Award has been awarded to Shashank Shekhar Sinha for Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India. The Jury also awarded… Read More Shashank Shekhar Sinha wins the 2025 Karwaan Book Award for ‘Casting the Buddha’

26th December 202526th December 2025 Dilip

Wallace Stevens: Description without place (1946)

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. Wallace Stevens’ “Description without Place” was composed for and delivered at the Phi Beta Kappa ceremony at Harvard in 1946. Here are a few lines from this remarkably abstract but in fact… Read More Wallace Stevens: Description without place (1946)

24th December 2025 Dilip

A Christmas Story

The Bible is unquestionably the most scrutinized “book” in history. Yet certain obvious facts about it nonetheless escape notice. For example, as Diarmaid MacCulloch points out in the Review’s December 18, 2025, the Bible is not in fact a book, but “books,” as its original Greek name (biblia) attests: sixty-six of them, or seventy-three, or seventy-six, depending… Read More A Christmas Story

22nd December 202522nd December 2025 Dilip

Natalia Ginzburg: Our Monstrous Ideas

NB: A blurb for a book of philosophical essays asks if ours is the era of ‘faint-hearted’ philosophy, because we were/are not ‘able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit.’ The ongoing ideological assault on the mind and the very soul of humanity point to the widespread failures… Read More Natalia Ginzburg: Our Monstrous Ideas

19th December 202519th December 2025 Dilip

‘India’s First Radicals’ argues for a generous assessment of 19th-century Indian intellectual life

NB: Those who bang on about Macaulay’s Minute on education (1835) should acquaint themselves with this early Indian patriot, whose work in education inspired a generation and who preceded Macaulay by many years. DS The men of Young Bengal emerge not as pale imitations of British liberals, but as creative political thinkers who addressed India’s… Read More ‘India’s First Radicals’ argues for a generous assessment of 19th-century Indian intellectual life

16th December 202516th December 2025 Dilip

After the truth-shower

Philosophy, history, literature, current affairs, and other stuff. Posted by Dilip Simeon

Tag: History