Alternatives to hegemony
Shelley Walia
Gramsci is Dead
by Richard J. F. Day. Pluto Press, London.
Pages 254. £12.95.
Deep structures in the fabric of the exploited world are responsible for the anarchist currents against globalised capital. Though anti-globalisation movements which initially began in Seattle in the late 1999 with mammoth demonstrations spreading to the rest of the world registered a deep resentment against the G8, the media significantly fell back on essentialisms and prejudices to paint the "anarchists as a sprawling welter of thousands of mostly young activists populating hundreds of mostly tiny splinter groups espousing dozens of mostly socialist critiques of the capitalist machine." Richard Day, in his brilliant book, Gramsci is Dead, draws attention to such "ill-informed caricature of anarchist activism" that labels such demonstrations as "threats," "mayhem," "rampage," or "disruptive power."

Preserving dignity
Jayanti Roy
Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land:
Dignity of Labour in our Times
by Kancha Ilaiah. Navayana Publishing, Chennai.
Pages 105. Rs 150.
Anovel title, an extraordinary theme, an attractive getup and lots of pen drawings—no booklover can remain inattentive to this book. On the cover, folk figures in orange with large fish eyes engaged in manual labour, weaving, ploughing, working on potters’ wheel, cutting hair or pounding grain, drawn on a blue and olive background, catch your attention instantly. The creativity of the illustrator Durgabai Vyom spilling on every other page is a joy to behold.

March of a nation
Cookie Maini
India since 1947: The Independent Years
by Gopa Sabharwal. Penguin Books.
Pages 392. Rs 295.
India at 60 is an appropriate juncture to commemorate the achievements, introspect the progress as well as commiserate the glitches. It has spurred off a plethora of celebratory events and triggered off reams of publications. However, the books have majorly focussed on Partition and the freedom movement (as if there were not enough) in all fairness and objectivity.

Grass welcomes acclaim
GUENTER Grass, Nobel literature laureate, has welcomed the acclaim given to him in the run-up to his 80^th birthday, saying he has recovered from the "hurtful" criticism in the recent past. Grass was shaken by public reaction last year to the first volume of his autobiography, in which he set the scene for his later career as a democrat by exploring how he had been a keen Nazi as a youth.

Journey of hardship and triumph
D. S. Cheema
The Romance of Tata Steel
by R. M. Lala. Penguin. Page 169.
Price not stated.
The history of development of new independent India and its people will remain incomplete without giving due recognition to the contribution of the Tatas. Though the common man may not remember the names of legendry trio—Jamsetji N. Tata, Sir Dorab Tata and J. R. D. Tata—a grateful nation understands their role and is happy that they were there to shape its future. J. R. D. Tata, a visionary par excellence, was the chairman of Tata Steel for 46 years. He put his philosophy in simple words, "Nothing is worth attempting that will not benefit the nation."

School for soldiers
Vijay Mohan
Valour and Wisdom: History of the Indian Military Academy
by Brig (Dr) M P Singh. Unistar, Chandigarh. Pages 264. Rs 595
The genesis and establishment of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) is closely associated with the freedom struggle. The IMA came into being in October 1932, 15 years before the Tricolour was first unfurled atop the Red Fort.

Wrongs and police rites
Aruti Nayar
Stamping Out Rights
The Impact of anti-terrorism laws on policing
Published by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi. Pages 82
The launch of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s (CHRI) 2007 Report to the Commonwealth Heads of Government, Stamping Out Rights: The impact of anti-terrorism laws on policing, focuses on the need for police and legislative reform in the Commonwealth in an age of terrorism. Released at CHRI’s 20th anniversary conference in London, last month, the report highlights disturbing trends in counter-terrorism laws passed, and the resulting police abuses, on the basis of the preservation of national security.

O captains, our captains
Vikramdeep Johal
Indian Captains of Cricket (1932-2006)
by Kishin R. Wadhwaney
Siddharth Publications, Delhi.
Pages 458. Rs 600.
Cricket is said to be a game of glorious uncertainties. In Indian cricket, there are uncertainties galore, though very few of them can be called glorious. This year alone, several tumultuous events have happened that virtually nobody could have predicted — Team India’s premature exit from the ODI World Cup, the launch of ICL and IPL, Rahul Dravid’s decision to quit captaincy, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s elevation to the hot seat, and above all, the historic victory in the Twenty20 World Cup.

Roth tells a writer’s tale
Exit Ghost
by Philip Roth.
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Pages 292. $ 26
Does Nathan Zuckerman’s decline mirror his creator’s? Philip Roth fans hope not, writes
Justin Cartwright
There has been a spate of novels about the last glimmerings of love or the dying of the light by older male writers. J M Coetzee has been at it with his new novel Diary of a Bad Year, Richard Ford in The Lay of the Land, and Philip Roth has visited this territory twice previously: in Everyman he described ageing as carnage and in The Dying Animal David Kepesh articulated Roth’s new obsession with death, which has all but displaced sex. This time he has done it in the person of his alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, who has featured in nine novels.

Elementary, dear Holmes
If anyone has to be thanked for the long-running Sherlock Holmes series, it is author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mum, a new book on the writer-physician has revealed. The tome Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, that will hit bookshelves next month has some of the letters Doyle wrote to his mother. 

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