Category: Reviews
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Book Review: Crypto Crimes – Inside India’s Best-Kept Secret
Cryptocurrency. Bitcoin. Digital assets. While the vast majority of people in India (and probably elsewhere in the world) have heard of these terms, most have very little or no understanding of what these really are, what they mean and what drives their value. And yet, many still believe that dabbling in these might somehow open…
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The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir
‘The strangely enduring and occasionally fractious friendship that developed between the famously outspoken historian Ramachandra Guha and his reticent editor Rukun Advani is the subject of this quite eccentric and thoroughly compelling literary memoir,’ says the publisher’s note, about The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir, which was published by Juggernaut Books earlier this year.…
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Why We Die: Book Review
Death is the final frontier, the inevitable end. We know that and yet most of us find it difficult to deal with thoughts of dying and of death. With major advances in medical science over the last 100 years or so, doctors and scientists have been able to increase human lifespans, but in the end,…
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Book Review: Bhang Journeys – Stories, Histories, Trips and Travels
Made with the leaves of the cannabis plant, bhang has been consumed in India for thousands of years. Mixed with thandai or lassi, bhang – which is mildly psychoactive and which can produce feelings of euphoria – is often consumed during the festival of Holi, although true connoisseurs will give it a go at any…
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Book Review: Code Dependent – Living in the Shadow of AI
Having grown up in Mumbai and now based in the UK, Madhumita Murgia is Artificial Intelligence Editor at the Financial Times, in London. Her impressive list of academic qualifications includes an MA in Journalism from the New York University and before joining FT, she has worked with leading publications like Wired magazine, The Telegraph and…
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Book Review: The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal
‘I became a liberal because I believed in the virtues of openness, mutual respect, and a concern for others. Liberalism offered me an ethically responsible order of human progress without necessarily involving the state. For over two centuries, liberal democracies and free markets spread around the world to become the only sensible way to organize…
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Book Review: Becoming Goan – A Contemporary Coming-Home Story
Goa. For a lot of people, it’s their idea of paradise. White beaches. Blue water. Cocktails and a balmy sea breeze. Snoozy, lazy days. Parties in the night. A relaxed, chilled-out Goan lifestyle that’s a world away from the helter-skelter of a Delhi or a Mumbai. That’s the dream, right? Sure, and for a lucky…
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Book Review: Fluke – Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
Think about this for a second. There are currently more than a billion websites in the world, about 200 million of which are active. Two hundred million active websites. And here you are, on BooksFirst, reading about Fluke. In the larger scheme of things, how random is that? What might have been the probability of…
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Book Review: Journeys Across India
Born in 1854 in the district of Nadia, in West Bengal, Durgacharan Rakshit was a scholar and a business owner who, in the late-1800s and early-1900s, set out to travel across India. This, he did on foot and by boat, train and horse-drawn carriage – practically whatever means of transport was available at any given…
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Book Review: Tightwads and Spendthrifts
What most of humanity can agree upon, without too much debate, is that most of us quite like having money. As much of it, in fact, as possible and then some more. But spending all that money can be the tricky part. The tightwads amongst us are inclined to be extra careful with handing out…