Reviews for Chandra Shekhbar A Political Biography

The average rating for Chandra Shekhbar A Political Biography based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-03 00:00:00 Douglas Allen In her opening pages, Shirley Roberts announces that "Hotham appears as a man who has been most unfairly denigrated". Clearly her intention in writing this book is to rescue him from this fate.  Of course, historians mount arguments about individuals all the time, making judgements "from the enormous condescension of posterity" as E. P. Thompson put it.  In this case, however, Roberts' intention to scrub the mud from Charles Hotham detracts from her book as history. She accepts uncritically certain sources and cherry picks from others, and when actions contradict her argument she brushes them off as inexplicable or strange. However, despite these flaws, Roberts has written what seems to be the only biography of a man whose short 15 month governorship coincided with a political flashpoint in a colony on the verge of receiving self-government. ...I was very impressed with her ability to summarize a scenario or event clearly and succinctly, without overwhelming the reader with detail.  This was especially true of Hotham's time in South America and Africa, which I knew absolutely nothing about.  She is not an academic historian - and the paucity of her reference list attests to this - and her book is more a matter of setting things out, rather than complicating by nuance. ...Roberts' determination to rescue Hotham from blame has led her to mount a polemic, rather than write a biography.  The reader should approach this book with admiration at the job she has done, and appreciation for filling in otherwise little known information. At the same time, however, this book needs to read with care and a raised, sceptical eyebrow.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-07 00:00:00 Evan Black Because of Senlin, part II (iiuc), as read so marvelously by the author on The Spoken Word: American Poets and also from Wikipedia "A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a science fiction novel by Madeleine L'Engle, the third book in the Time Quintet. It was first published in 1978 with cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon. The book's title is an allusion to the poem "Morning Song of Senlin" by Conrad Aiken."