The world's best books on Bollywood

The New York Review of Ideas features a section called Breakthrough Books, where scholars and experts name the most significant works in their fields.

We picked up a post recommending recent scholarship on Hindi cinema and the choice of books proved more interesting than their countless colorful coffee table counterparts. The range covers topics from Hindi film music, to Indian action cinema, from the intertwined film histories of India, Britain and the United States to Tamil cinema and the impact of the Partition on Indian film.

Professors of South Asian Cinema and Comparative Literature, Anthropology and Culture & Media, Indian Culture and Cinema pick two to three books each and discuss why these works are important.

Titles include:

Bhaskar Sarkar’s "Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition" (Duke University Press)

Neepa Majumdar’s "Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!: Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s-50s" (Indiana University Press)

"Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance" (Minnesota 2008) edited by Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti

Preminda Jacob’s "Celluloid Deities: The Visual Culture of Cinema and Politics in South India" (Lexington Books 2008)

Valentina Vitali’s book on action cinema, "Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies" (Oxford University Press 2009)

and Priya Jaikumar’s "Cinema at the End of Empire: A Politics of Transition in Britain and India" (Duke University Press, 2006)

We've listed the some of the article's featured best books on Bollywood here, and they're all available on Amazon, but read Anna Bak-Kvapil's complete article for the professors consulted and further details on each title.