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1921. America was preparing for Armageddon against the British. In the Congress, Great Britain was dubbed "a red pox spreading across the Pacific". There were calls for the United States to "seize maritime control of the world". " As war frenzy mounted, someone said, "We were Britain's colony once. She will be our colony before she is done." For the uninitiated, it may sound confounding, unbelievable. But this Anglophobia was a reality in the US between the two wars. The deadlock did break and...

Few short-fought wars have evoked so much of heat, debate and self-criticism (read, justified criticism of the party/parties at the helm of affairs) as the Kargil War did this summer. That too in the very country that ostensibly won the war. The facts are there for all to acknowledge: Pakistan-backed fundamentalist-terrorists had indeed intruded into Indian territory; many of these intruders were Pakistan army regulars in the guise of plain-clothed militants; the Indian authorities had been...

The past two decades have seen two potent but disparate movements - those of gender and participation. Each has generated writings and major implications for each other. Yet, ironically, as Robert Chambers (widely recognised as one of the main driving forces behind the great surge of interest in the use of participatory rural appraisals the globe over) contends, this is perhaps the first book to thoroughly explore the overlaps, linkages, contradictions and synergies between the two. The two...

Cinema plays a powerful role in implicating the way in which an audience begins to think about the 'reality' that each film supposedly depicts. Ananda Mitra investigates the representation of Indians in Western films and locates this analysis within the context of the larger issue of the manner in which Indian immigrants are viewed in the West today. Mitra covers a large spectrum of films made over several decades and critiques the issue by identifying and analysing how those narrative and...

After 30 years of reporting on France for Reuters and The Economist and marriage to a Frenchwoman, Jonathan Fenby comes out with an informative, insightful and critical study of France, his "home, away from home". Fenby, now the editor of South China Morning Post, weaves reportage, anecdotes and analyses into a fascinating presentation of contemporary France. He is thorough with French politics, society and history and sees today's state of affairs from the backdrop of the French Revolution, the...

An autobiographical sojourn of a philosopher to explain his moorings in philosophy is fraught with its intrinsic perils - that of becoming a self-indulgent, subjective rambling of personal notions and prejudices. For those brought up on Bertrand Russel's "History of Philosophy" or Will Durant's "The Story of "Philosophy" or, for that matter, T.Z. Lavine's "From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest", this volume is sure to come as a let-down.But then, Bryan Magee does not make such...

Till taught by pain, man knows not water's worth.- Byron If you say "water" to an engineer, he thinks drainage, pipes, money, energy - but not life. - Hermann KnoflacherIn modern societies, water is taken for granted because it comes out when one turns on the tap and is drained away after use.. It is only when a water crisis hits one that people become aware of the maxim that "water is life." Human beings are becoming thirstier by the day, consuming five times the amount of water today than 40...

Few terms, these days, evoke so much disagreement and rancour as does the word "development." Every economist, environmentalist, sociologist, anthropologist and you-say-who differs in his or her interpretation of what "development" means. Delve a little deeper, and the debate becomes one of what "development" should entail. Arguments continue, differences persist. How sustainable is development too transforms into another contention about my theory of development being more sustainable than...

At an age when children bubble with sheer joy of being alive, millions of small girls struggle to survive the burden of poverty, overwork and ill-health in India. Girls who are forced to labour, endure an entire childhood of extremely poor health with their physical and emotional well-being at a constant three-fold risk due to their living conditions, the work they must do and the fact that they are female. These not-so-unknown, yet always ever-so-shocking facts, are highlighted in this book...

Spreading water shortages are threatening to reduce the global food supply by more than 10 per cent. Left unaddressed, these shortages could lead to hunger, civil unrest, and even wars over water. Irrigation accounts for two-thirds of global water use, but less than half that water reaches the roots of plants. "Without increasing water productivity in irrigation, major food-producing regions will not have enough water to sustain crop production," says Sandra Postel, the author. Some 40 per cent...