This collage was commissioned by author Jayita Sarkar for the  cover for her book, “Ploughshares and Swords, Indias Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War”, published by Cornell University Press in 2022. This was an opportunity for Sarkar and myself to engage in an exchange of ideas and reflections which invited us both to expand our horizons and the ways in which we articulate our own understandings around the book’s content. See Sarkar’s comments on the process and a description of the collage:

“…Working with a collage artist was a fascinating experience, forcing me to visually reconstruct the idea of my book. Through Galen's remarkable talent and after several rounds of brainstorming, we came up with what became the book cover. The landmass that drops from the right is the map of south Bombay (present-day Mumbai), where the India’s Department of Atomic Energy and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research are located, thousands of miles from India’s capital, New Delhi. If you know the cartography of the area, you can locate Trombay, where the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre is— the nerve centre of India's nuclear program. The landmass is filled with a collage of archival materials in multiple languages, representing India’s national nuclear program as a globally sourced endeavor. The figure to the left is an altered version of the United Nations sculpture in New York, “Let us beat our swords into ploughshares,” which has inspired the title of the book. The figure raises one sword while beating the other into a ploughshare, representing the duality in India’s nuclear program, which the book explores. The blurred backdrop is a partial map of the world, showing several places that India received nuclear technologies and know-how from, cutting across the Cold War divide.”

If you would like to purchase the book or learn more of Sarkar’s work you may do so at jayitasarkar.com. The book is also available on Amazon and other purchasing platforms.