An excellent book contains speeches & essays by author, activist & novelist Arundhati Roy written in between 2000 & 2005 probably. As usual she has written / spoken on excessive of state against the people with tactical support of media. On America's so called war in Iraq & Afghanistan & its duplicity. She has also written on how Martin's US, Mahatma's India & Mandela's South Africa betrayed their people.
Small but comprehensive book.

"For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning." the celebrated author of The God of Small Things States So.
An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire is a well constructed essay collection written between 2002 and 2004 — most of them from those published in newspapers.

Roy reveals her passion for writing through 14 chapters. She dissects the situation at Iraq and the Middle East and about those who struggles for their daily bread and existence in their mother land. The satirical writing makes the book an interesting piece. Even then a frustrated Writer pops up through out the book.

Roy illustrates the power of common man thus, motivating them to speak out and act for their human rights. “History is giving you the chance,” she writes.

Come September is my favorite among 14.

Really good read. It's focused on the early 2000s "War on Terror" era of neoliberal imperialism. It's helpful to remember that time. I also appreciated how this book bridged from theories of resistance to specific tactics.

Interesting, anti-imperialist, standing up for the ordinary people of the world.

The book is compilation of articles written by Arundhati roy in 2002-2004. It's a chilling & eye-opening account of the struggle of people against "empire"(cartel of self interested corporate organizations & power hungry "pro-development" governments). How the other side of story of this struggle is continuously being repressed by continuous show of empire-side stories by "fair" media lead my same people against whom this resistance is waged in the fist place!

It's a good read for anyone who would like to listen to arguments against neo-liberalism & coporatization at the cost of brutal exploitation of common people's basic human rights & sense of justice/fairness. The book particularly illustrates this at length by the examples of horrors unleashed by an illegal US-invasion of Iraq & Afghanistan & construction of massive dams in India without proper rehabilitation & compensation for displaced people.

Good for helping us understand how deeply a few things are flawed

Her analysis is so easy to read and beautifully written, and I found the book informative. These essays are a couple years old and while addressing international issues, are certainly India focused- so the downside was my rudimentary knowledge of contemporary Indian politics. I learned alot from it, but definatley didn't get it all....

Gives you a lot of perspective.

All 118 pages of this were incredible to read. It’s very clearly timely for when it was written (US going to war with Iraq) but so much of the discussion and parallels (sadly) hold true to this day. It’s definitely a provocative book- in the best way.

This was my second novel by Arundhati Roy. I already had a taste of her writing in my first book of hers (Broken Republic: Three Essays). She has a very different perspective of looking at things. This book covers her stance on dams in India, United states America, Capitalism among other small things. From what I have inferred she is a staunch opponent of capitalism so she criticizes just about every country whose has a capitalistic economic model.

In general, she is a staunch opponent of Inequality. She just can't stand Inequality . She sees inequality everywhere and she doesn't paint a very good picture of the things she sees as is done by our politicians and lawmakers saying that "It would be better in Future". She is not an opponent of reforms or development, she just has a different definition of it, which doesn't suit the capitalist economy. This is the reason I think she is criticized and also hated by many.

She believes that the relations and connection between politicians, big corporations, media houses etc are the things we can't just ignore. She can't overlook the correlation of the profits of big corporations and the number of friends in government.

Roy begins by detailing what is democracy and how we can make it work:

n  The only way to make democracy real is to begin a process of constant questioning, permanent provocation, and continuous public conversation between citizens and the state.n

On freedom:

n  It is important to remember that our freedoms, such as they are, were never given to us by any government, they have been wrested by us. n

Roy elaborates how governments, nationalism, patriotism, democracy and NGOs are just spokes of the giant wheel of capitalism. On Iraq:

n  Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via corporate multinationals. Like Shell, like Chevron, like Halliburton.n

She talks about terrorism and how it has been privatized. Paraphrasing her (too lazy to find the exact quote this time), because the governments cannot have a monopoly on terror.

USA with their Patriot Act, India with their POTA are (were) just trying to kill any form of oppression, any form of dissent, any peaceful means of showing disagreement. Media is crisis driven, it will focus its pen and its camera where there is a crisis. Peaceful means find no form of promotion, thus people are turning to violence. We are thus left in a quandary, we can't support terror and are not with the government. So, what can we do? (Write reviews of course)

Oh, and in between all this, there's a really touching scene of the town of Harsud which was destroyed by the big dam on Narmada river. I wrote a brief sketch on it https://www.facebook.com/notes/desult...

PS: One thing which I hate about a collection of essays like this one is that the editing sucks. One can find not only similar arguments but even same paragraphs in multiple essays. So, minus one star for the editor.

Too liberal; too preachy.