Amazing! Really no idea how Ball does what he does, but looking forward to this book.

Oh no, but have fun. Will pick up a copy soon and read.

Hi Maithreyi, are you doing book signings in Church Street in BLR? Would love to meet, and get a copy signed too.

Please tell me you also use a fountain pen for the manuscript :)

Thanks for this! I had heard of both the Black and McPhee (Black's book has been sitting on my TBR for ages). But Poppick is a new one for me.

Err, I might have got the only copy. But I'm sure Krishna from Bookworm will get you one too.

Can't wait to read whatever it is, and congratulations! Happy holidays indeed.

Great review! I saw this tome in the local Bookworm, and despite its gargantuan heft, I simply had to have it. Don't know when I'll be even able to finish 30% of it.

These exist, and are called Special Economic Zones in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. And unfortunately, our elites and some sections of the media love them.

Or the fellows like Aakar who used to tweet out links where folks could pirate his books, and there would always be chaps in the comments telling, 'thank you, now I'll go buy this book' :)

Lol, point taken (I hope to publish at least at some point in my life).

I had one Indian prof, from India, who was serious and unapologetic about using diacritics when his name appeared as an author of an academic paper (so his last name only). I've actually met people later who thought he was French (still pronounced his name wrongly).

These are the same patterns that happened in India too, back more than 10 years ago. A substantial rightward shift among people who "consumed" media on YouTube or Twitter (overwhelmingly young people).
And it's still happening, the crazies are getting crazier, because it sells.

Wait wait wait, they colonised almost all of SE Asia to not even learn this!

I'm afraid then my TL will be like 4 folks :(
Really hoping for a mass exodus here still though.

This is a great analogy! Going to keep using it from now on.

Amazing! Since this is published by Bloomsbury, we in India will get it soon too I hope! Can't wait to get my hands on it.

And welcome!

Yes, it goes down as one of the best books I've ever read. Can't believe somebody can write like that, and weave such a narrative.

Yes, this has been on my tbr too! Thanks for the recco.

This was such a great review, thank you for sharing it!

Is this going to be screened or recorded by any chance?

This looks like straight up greenwashing no? Allow these countries to show they're doing "meaningful work" to combat emissions, a very crude case of numbers go up, so doing good.

My god, I thought they had kicked him out already. What more should it take?

These articles look fascinating, thank you for sharing them.

And unless the Democrat leadership realises they have to accommodate the working class in some way, it really does look terrible for them. Clearly Mamdani and the Leftward turn of some section of the Party is perhaps a harbinger of that.

I am right now reading Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank, written before the 2016 election, and it is the history of the Democrat Party leadership's turn towards Neoliberalism in the Clinton years. Makes for fascinating reading even now...

And Spinney walks us through with real skill, and dare I say, a wonderful sense of humanity and wonder. Really, all the tricky topics of the science and the history behind the genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and politics is handled with deftness. I was wowed.

@tnavinash.bsky.social @rapiduplift.bsky.social @mrajshekhar.bsky.social Hi folks, restarting this tradition. If you folks haven't put Proto, by Laura Spinney in your reading lists yet, you should do so immediately. I found it a masterful synthesis of a fascinating topic, on Proto Indo European.

This is so cool! Also, thank you for illustrating an underappreciated species. Do you know if people are studying jackal wolf, or jackal pet dog, or even jackal fox dynamics in any of these places?