Arnold Zeitlin is managing director of Editorial Research & Reporting Associates (ERRA). He was a senior reporter for the Associated Press as well as Asia vice president for United Press International, and Asia center director for the Freedom Forum. He is an Advisory Board Member of South Asia Journal.
Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia, by Ayesha Jalal, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2008, Paperback, 400 pgs, $21.15 Amazon, ISBN-13: 978-0674047365- by Arnold Zeitlin 18 January 2021 The concept of jihad has roiled the Islamic world and the rest of the world since the beginning of the Islamic era. The Arabic
READ MOREThe Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State, by Declan Walsh, W.W. Norton & Co., publisher, New York City, Hardcover, 2020, 335 pgs, $30 ISBN: 9780393249910. Despite the title of his book, author Declan Walsh actually focuses on eight lives, perhaps leaving the ninth for Pakistan. Five of those lives end
READ MOREThe Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan, by Owen Bennett-Jones, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 27 October 2020, Hardcover, 320 pages, $28, ISBN: 97880300246674. By Arnold Zeitlin Owen Bennett-Jones’s account of a Bhutto dynasty reminded me that I enjoyed a rare, near-quixotic relationship with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during my time, September 1969 to April 1972, as
READ MOREHarperCollins, India, 2020, 208pp, hardcover, $21.95 ISBN-13: 978-9353578015 ISBN-10: 9353578019 Author: Aparna Pande by Arnold Zeitlin 14 November 2020 Considering Aparna Pande’s approach to making India great, her brisk survey of the country’s ills might have been better entitled Deconstructing India. “India has embraced modernity, but only partially,” Pande writes, a lament repeated throughout her book. “…..India’s
READ MOREAuthor: Richard Sisson & Leo E. Rose, University of California Press, Berkeley, California 1990 Paperback, 338 pages, $23.97 on Amazon, ISBN-13: 978-0520076655 Review by: Arnold Zeitlin 27 August 2020 War and Secession remain 30 years after its first publication, the go-to book for a concise, yet comprehensive account of the events that led
READ MOREAuthor: Rana Ayyub, self-published, 2016, Paperback, 204 pages Originally published: March 25, 2016, Subject: 2002 Gujarat riots by Andrew Zeitlin 20 August 2020 Rana Ayyub, an Indian investigative reporter and practicing Muslim, disguised herself as a Hindu Indian-American filmmaker and, equipped with tiny cameras and recorder secreted in her kurta, diary, and wristwatch, went off in
READ MOREby Shashi Tharoor, Scribe Publications, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 201, 294 pg, Paperback, $17.95, ISBN: 978-1-9475-3430-8 by Arnold Zeitlin 10 August 2020 Shashi Tharoor is an angry Indian. He is bitter at the British as he outlines their more than two centuries of exploiting Indian resources and people, then departing hastily in 1947 to permit
READ MOREStanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2019 Paperback, 245 PPS, $28, ISBN: 978 1 5036 0947-1 by Arnold Zeitlin 20 July 2020 Exploring the impact of the crowd on politics, especially in Bangladesh, where crowds are part of everyday life, is a dandy idea. Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury, who comes from Bangladesh and is an assistant
READ MOREBloomsburg Publishing, New York City 2019,Hardcover, 522 pgs, $35, ISBN: 978-1-63557-395-4 by Arnold Zeitlin 7 July 2020 Author William Dalrymple targets the British East India Company for its evil over two centuries in India. In the process, he unmasks a passel of crude, extravagant, feckless, greedy, reprobate rascals — the so-called indigenous rulers over
READ MOREThe Argumentative Indian: Writing on Indian History,Culture and Identity, by Amartya Sen, Farrar, Strass and Giroux, New York, 2005, 409 pp, Hardcover, $6.61 on Amazon, ISBN: 978-0-374-10583-9 by Arnold Zeitlin 6 July 2020 Polymath economist and Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen’s sentiments, written more than two decades ago about the land of his birth
READ MOREISBN-13: 978-1503611986 ISBN-10: 1503611981 by Maria Rashid Stanford University Press, Stanford California, paperback, 267 pgs. $28 by Arnold Zeitlin 30 June 2020 Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army, by Maria Rashid, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, paperback, 267 pgs. $28, ISBN: 978-1-5036-1198-6 Psychologist Maria Rashid has produced
READ MOREThant Myint-U November 12, 2019W. W. Norton & Company2020, 285 pp, Hardcover, $27.95 ISBN:9781324003304 by Arnold Zeitlin 20 June 2020 The Hidden History of Burma comes across more like the unhidden history of its author, Thant Myint-U. He pops up like Woody Allen’s cinematic human chameleon, Zelig, in many episodes in his country’s history since
READ MOREby Arnold Zeitlin 8 June 2020 Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, by Sarmila Bose, 240 pp, Hurst Publishers, London, April 2011, ISBN-13978 818 490 495 I first read Dead Reckoning in proof in March 2011, before its publication in April of that year in preparation for the launch of the book
READ MOREby Arnold Zeitlin 2 June 2020 The book, a compilation of essays by five writers and the poetry of one, serves as a reminder of how tragic the story of Kashmir has become since the book was published a decade ago. The Kashmir epic, for more than 70 years, a running sore between India
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