Michael Barnett’s “Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism” (2011, Cornell University Press) is a great addition to not only the history of the sector but also its complexities and ethical challenges. This is recommended reading for anyone seeking to understand humanitarianism. One limitation is that the book has a eurocentric focus, neglecting traditions from […]
Mbembe is a great philosopher who has made significant contributions, which are widely cited. This is notable because his work is largely in French and his books have had to be translated into English to reach broader audiences. Despite that delay, as of this writing he has amassed 70,000 citations to his work. This book, […]
This 1972 book, The Hidden Injuries of Class, is a highly cited book (nearly 5,000 citations) by Sennett and Cobb. The work covers meritocracy, individualism and class / caste. Suggested to be a sociological critique of everyday life, and at the time of publication it may have been unique and inspired other similar investigations. A […]
V. Y. Mudimbe, Congolese-born American philosopher, is probably most well known for this book “The Invention of Africa – Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge” (1988). The book is a discourse analysis of sorts on the conceptualization of Africa and of African philosophy. With decades having passed since its writing, the novelty of this […]
Recent scholarship has sought to gather and analyze what was suggested to be the agreements made in the early years of Islam with other faith communities. The veracity of these documents was a question (not a new question). In “The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad: From Shared Historical Memory to Peaceful Co-Existence” (2023), Ibrahim Zein […]
Samir Amin has written a shelf full of books, many of which are compilations of articles he wrote. I have a shelf of them, including these compilations. Since these are compilations and not purpose written books one finds less new, and most are of Samir Amin reiterating his core messages, occasionally to new topics of […]
A widely read, and apparently common undergraduate reading text, on Singapore is Alvin Tan’s “Singapore: A Very Short History, From Temasek to Tomorrow”, which was first published in 2000 and updated in a 2022 edition. I picked this up in Singapore looking to understand more about the political economy, and this did not deliver much […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]