With The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Arundhati Roy proved that she could write nonfiction as well as fiction. Hell, that’s an understatement - the book was a brilliant collection of polished essays, in which she displayed her trademark intellectual rants and lucid reasoning. And with this second collection of essays, she goes one step further.

An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire consists of 14 well constructed, passionate articles written between June 2002 and November 2004 —  some of which were delivered as speeches while others were published in newspapers — in which Roy deconstructs the concepts of empire, neoliberal capitalism, corporate globalization, and state terrorism with a degree of both passion and erudition that is truly astounding.

“Ahimsa” deals with the struggle of the Narmada Bachao Andolan to make its voice heard in India’s policy deciding bodies. In this world that is increasingly fixated on terrorism and other movements of violent resistance, it is increasingly difficult for the votaries of non-violence to be heard. She notes that “Any government’s condemnation of terror is credible only if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, closely argued, non violent dissent”.

What Roy fears is that people will be forced to abandon modes of non violent resistance and commit violence in order to grab headlines in today’s "free media". Should such a thing come to pass, it would be a veritable deathblow to the theory of ahimsa that Mahatma Gandhi propounded and executed to great effect during the struggle for independence against British rule.

Roy says in “Come September” that nationalism was the cause of genocides in the 20th century. Like a surgeon wielding a scalpel, she deftly shreds our most sacred doctrines. "Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead." She enumerates the innumerable crimes committed by the United States government against humanity right from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the penchant for engineering coups and regime changes throughout South America, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and finally the staunch support to Israel in order to prevent an equitable solution to the issue of Palestine issue - all under the excuse of "championing the cause of freedom"!

Arundhati Roy accurately points out that the real reason for the war against Iraq is to grab control of its oil resources. After an incisive analysis of the corporate globalization project and its end results, she concludes that just like Soviet–style communism, the American style market capitalism is doomed to failure - because it allowed too few people [“a handful of bankers and CEOs whom nobody elected”] to usurp too much power.