Today I read Pankaj Mishra's article in the New York Times about Prime Minister Modi. His writing style - bold, sweeping, confident, and provocative - reminded me of the late Christopher Hitchens. I did some more research on the writer and found his recent article in the Guardian about the broken western [sic] model. I am still too ignorant of the author to be able to pin down his views, but I want to learn more because I like his writing style and the diversity of his references.
His sentences are challenging and fun to read. Take this one from the aforementioned article in the Guardian.
"The old Marxist teleology was retrofitted rather than discarded in Francis Fukuyama's influential end-of-history history these and cruder theories about the inevitable march to worldwide prosperity and stability were vended by such Panglosses of globalisation as Thomas Friedman."
I love how "vended" conjures images of cheap and older Snicker bars. Its proximity to "Panglosses" is another quick blow to the ideology of capitalism.
He incorporates many references throughout his long articles and I added several of them to my reading list, including China, East Asia and the Global Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives by Japanese historian Takeshi Hamashita, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 by C.A. Bayly and Peasants into Frenchman: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 by a U.S. historian of Romanian descent Eugen Weber.
