I still need to get a few book reviews up, and here’s a good one to begin 2010 on. Nation Branding: Concepts and Country Perspectives, edited by Nishit Kumar and Anil Varma and published by ICFAI Press, is a very complete book giving a snapshot of the discipline’s practice in the late 2000s. There are over 20 chapters, with contributions from the authors, and from Simon Anholt, Melissa Aronczyk, myself and others.
   Unlike others that blend points of view from different authors, Nishit and Anil have tied this book together beautifully. It reads well as a single volume, the information is up to date, and readers should get a very strong overview of the subject area. There’s plenty of academic rigour in the research, but the book does not lose non-academics when it comes to the subject.
   Practitioners would be well advised to combine a reading of, say, Keith Dinnie’s Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice, Simon Anholt’s Brand New Justice, and this latest volume.