A review by sbhatnag
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia by Pankaj Mishra

4.0

I'm not going to lie - this book was a tough one to get through. Unlike other historians that I have read, such as Dalrymple and Guha, Pankaj Mishra's writing is much more dense, more "textbooky" (is that a word?), and not as entertaining. HOWEVER (all caps intentional), the content of the book is the reason I stuck with it. I felt like it was my responsibility as a global citizen, as a follower/former practitioner of foreign policy, as an Indian-American, to read this book - and learn about an alternative view of history and the anti-colonialism movement that I certainly was not taught in an American classroom. Every policymaker, especially in the United States, needs to read this book from cover to cover - it should be required reading for anyone working on Asia and the Middle East. And, lastly, it should be required reading for the people of Asia, particularly the growing powers of India and China. As Mishra states, "The rise of Asia, and the assertiveness of Asian people, consummates their revolt against the West that began more than a century ago; it is in many ways the revenge of the East. Yet this success conceals an immense intellectual failure... no convincingly universalist response exists today to Western ideas of politics and economy, even though these seem increasingly febrile and dangerously unsuitable in large parts of the world."