The Elephant, the Tiger,and the Cell Phone:
Reflections on India, the emerging 21st-century power
by Shashi Tharoor
Arcade, 2007
Tharoor, a lifelong UN man whose bid to be secretary-general was reportedly nixed by the White House, has now collected together his columns from such media outlets as The Hindu and The Washington Post. Short sketches of people he admires (from Amartya Sen to the great cricketer Sunil Gavaskar), coupled with short vignettes on moments forgotten, make up this entertaining collection – the unabashed goal of which, as Tharoor puts it, is to make the "world safe for diversity". (Vijay Prashad)
The New Asian Hemisphere:
The irresistible shift of global power to the East
by Kishore Mahbubani
Public Affairs, 2008 Mahbubani, a top-level Singaporean diplomat who is now dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, made a big splash with a previous book, Can Asians Think? That book, which came out in 2001, showed how European and US public policy is largely condescending towards Asia. This new work is more ambitious, arguing that it is the East that is now going to be dominant over the planet – but that the West need not fear. The East, according to Mahbubani, will simply be the West: there will be no challenge as such, only a spatial shift for business as usual. Asia's Arnold Toynbee strikes again, evidently – although this book, like Toynbee's work, ignores relations of power and, so, imperialism. (VP)