A stunning book, incomparably the best on its subject

Walter single-handedly revived interest in the Titanic...an electrifying book

Absolutely gripping and unputdownable

Devotion, gallantry...Benjamin Guggenheim changing to evening clothes to meet
death; Mrs. Isador Straus clinging to her husband, refusing to get in a lifeboat; Arthur Ryerson giving his life belt to his wife's maid...A book to remember

Seamless and skilful...it's clear why this is many a researcher's Titanic bible

Enthralling from the first word to the last

Moving and extremely well-documented

Brilliant ... Mishra reverses the long gaze of the West upon the East, showing modern history as it has been felt by the majority of the world's population - from Turkey to China. These are the amazing stories of the grandfathers of today's angry Asians. Excellent

Jolts our historical imagination ... a book of vast and wondrous learning and delightful and surprising associations that will give a new meaning to liberation geography

After Edward Said's masterpiece Orientalism, From the Ruins of Empire offers another bracing view of the history of the modern world. Pankaj Mishra [is] a brilliant author of wide learning ... skillful and captivating narration

Pankaj Mishra has produced a riveting account that makes new and illuminating connections. He follows the intellectual trail of this contested history with both intelligence and moral clarity. In the end we realise that what we are holding in our hands is not only a deeply entertaining and deeply humane book, but a balance sheet of the nature and mentality of colonisation

Highly readable and illuminating ... Mishra's analysis of Muslim reactions is particularly topical

Enormously ambitious but thoroughly readable, this book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today's Asia

Sophisticated ... not so much polemic as cri de coeur, motivated by Mishra's keen sense of the world, East and West, hurtling towards its own destruction

Outstanding ... Mishra wears his scholarship lightly and weaves together the many strands of history into a gripping narrative ... The insights afforded by this book are too many to be enumerated ... Mishra performs a signal service to the future - by making us read the past in a fresh light

[Full of] complexity and nuance

Subtle, erudite and entertaining

Mishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia

A vital, nuanced argument ... prodigious