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Akbar and his India

Starting from a seminar in 1992, acknowledging the 450th birth anniversary of Akbar, the 1997 book “Akbar and his India” (OUP) potentially presents a unique volume on Akbar. This book may be valuable for some, but a narrow few. This edited book presents a collection of largely disconnected contributions, but does not offer an introduction, […]

Tags: #Absolute Peace #Akbar #History #India #Mughal #Peace #Tolerance

Thought Provokers

The Ottoman Gulf

This 1997 book was written by a professor based in Bulgaria. It seeks to answer the question of why the Ottoman rule rose and fell in the Arabian Gulf. “The Ottoman Gulf – The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar”, published by Columbia University Press, is a unique contribution in that its sources are […]

Tags: #History #Kuwait #Middle East #Ottoman #Qatar

Thought Provokers

Global History: A View from the South

Readers who have followed this blog over the years will be familiar with Samir Amin (see other posts on his books for more). First of all, shout out the publisher Pambazuka Press & Fahamu, an African non-profit publisher, led by Firoze Manji (who I had the honor to spent time with when I was at […]

Tags: #Capitalism #China #Eurocentrism #History #Samir Amin

Thought Provokers

Tocqueville in Arabia

I opened Joshua Mitchell’s “Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age” (original 2013 by UChicago Press, reprint in 2023 with Encounter Books) skeptical. The author spent 3 years in Qatar in the mid-2000s and runs the risk of pretending to a be country expert (as many fly-in fly-out scholars have done). Fortunately, I […]

Tags: #Books #Higher education #Philosophy #Qatar

Thought Provokers
4IR: Reinventing a Nation

4IR: Reinventing a Nation

I recently had the opportunity to meet Dato Rais Hussin and he shared his 2019 book 4IR (AI, Blockchain, FinTech, IoT) Reinventing a Nation. The book is co-edited with Dinis Guarda and has a range of contributions from experts on topics from education to technical domains. After the launch of GPT in Nov 2022, AI […]

Tags: #4IR #Blockchain #FinTech #Malaysia #Rais Hussin

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Understanding Environmental Policy Processes

Understanding Environmental Policy Processes

Policy books on specific issues with specific cases tend to have a shorter shelf life of relevance. Keeley and Scoones wrote “Understanding Environmental Policy Processes: Cases from Africa” in 2003, and it largely falls in this category. The book has three cases as chapters (Ethiopia, Mali, Zimbabwe) and some general chapters on knowledge, power and […]

Tags: #Agricultural Policy #Environmental Policy #Ethiopia #Policy #Policy Networks

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