this is my major concern with The Argumentative Indian; it is a compilation novel of the author’s articles over the past decade. You see the same things, referenced again and again; compilation books are not only repetitive—how much text is wasted skimming the surface of the Gujurat Massacre ten separate times, rather than hitting it once with depth and vigor—but the tone is so disparate there is next to no authorial voice to guide you through the narrative. Any sense of uniqueness or cohesion on the part of an author is pressed flat by the need to match the format in which the text originally appeared; New York Review of Books; New Republic; Financial Times; et al.
Each chapter is stand-alone; you will undoubtedly pull the fantastic knowledge from the trove, but the cost is high.