A political party worker who produces crowds for electoral rallies. A “prison specialist” who serves other people’s prison sentences in exchange for a large fee. An engineer who is able to secure otherwise impossible building permits. These and other dealmakers—whose behind-the-scenes expertise and labor are often invisible—have an intrinsic role in the city ... Show More
Nov 22
Arpitha Kodiveri, "Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in India’s Forests" (Melbourne UP, 2024)
In Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in India’s Forests (Melbourne UP, 2024), Arpitha Kodiveri unpacks the fraught and shifting relationship between the Indian State, forest-dwelling communities, and forest conservation regimes.
The book builds on years of fieldwork ... Show More
1h 48m
Nov 20
Luke Gibson, "Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2025)
This textbook offers a fresh approach to learning Sanskrit, the ancient language at the heart of South Asia’s vast religious, philosophical, and literary heritage. Designed for independent learners and classrooms alike, it provides a uniquely in-depth and immersive introduction t ... Show More
41m 2s
Nov 18
David Boyk, "Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India (Cambridge UP, 2025) tells the story of Patna, in the north Indian region of Bihar, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A century and more earlier, Patna had been an important and populous ... Show More
1h 25m
Apr 2021
Lisa Björkman, "Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories" (Association for Asian Studies, 2020)
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in the Indian city of Mumbai, Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories (Association for Asian Studies, 2020) is an unconventional little book – experimental in form – about how we come to know the worlds a ... Show More
55m 49s
May 2024
The Weekend Intelligence: Bombay, open city?
Mumbai is famously an open city, known for welcoming all comers, regardless of colour, caste, or creed.
But as the city goes about building its future, Economist correspondent Leo Mirani, a proud Mumbaikar, fears his city’s character is being buried beneath the rubble.
In this e ... Show More
46m 54s
Jul 2021
Jacob Lederman, "Chasing World-Class Urbanism: Global Policy Versus Everyday Survival in Buenos Aires" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
What makes some cities world class? Increasingly, that designation reflects the use of a toolkit of urban planning practices and policies that circulates around the globe. These strategies—establishing creative districts dedicated to technology and design, “greening” the streets, ... Show More
53m 25s
May 2024
The Weekend Intelligence: Bombay, open city?
<p>Mumbai is famously an open city, known for welcoming all comers, regardless of colour, caste, or creed. </p><br><p>But as the city goes about building its future, <em>Economist</em> correspondent Leo Mirani, a proud Mumbaikar, fears his city’s character is being buried be ... Show More
46m 54s
Aug 2020
Ulrike Freitag, "A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Ulrike Freitag’s A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge University Press), offers a rich urban and biographical history of Jeddah.
Known as the 'Gate to Mecca' or 'Bride of the Red Sea', Jeddah has been a gateway for pilgrims t ... Show More
1h 15m
Oct 2020
Andrew Demshuk, "Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2020) illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of urban ingenuity amid catastrophic urban ... Show More
56m 49s
Mar 2022
Sarah-Neel Smith, "Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey" (U California Press, 2022)
Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey (University of California Press, 2022) is a vivid portrait of the art world of 1950s Turkey in which Sarah-Neel Smith offers a new framework for analyzing global modernisms of the twentieth century: economic development. ... Show More
49m 49s
Sep 2023
Peter Good, "The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 and subsequent foreign invasions from all sides, Persia had been in constant turmoil. On ... Show More
55m 40s
Jan 2024
Amanda Lanzillo, "Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India" (U California Press, 2024)
Pious Labour: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India (University of California Press, 2023) focuses on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries northern India and working-class people who asserted Islamic piety through their trade while responding to indust ... Show More
1 h