BUNGLING TOWARDS INSIGHTS - REVIEW OF MARIO LIVIO'S "BRILLIANT BLUNDERS"

Science is obviously a very human endeavor and is riddled with mistakes along the way. What makes it an enduring structure is that the mistakes are weeded out in due course by competing investigators. This mistake-making is the theme of Mario Livio's delightful book Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein (2013). Livio himself is an astrophysicist with wide-ranging interests and is well suited to delve into the creative forays of the scientific mind.

AMAZING AMAZON - REVIEW OF BRAD STONE'S "THE EVERYTHING STORE"

Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (2013) won the 2013 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award which is a superlative achievement. This book, however, is not like other FT-Goldman Sachs award winners such as Raghuram Rajan's Fault Lines (2010) or Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's Poor Economics (2011) which were more formal and academic. Stone's book reads more like a popular yarn, something that Walter Isaacson would be proud to write.

LIFE OF A GENIUS - REVIEW OF WALTER ISAACSON'S "EINSTEIN"

I would not hesitate to say that Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007) is a stunning tour de force, even better than his recently published and much acclaimed biography of Steve Jobs.

Isaacson shows much affection and care towards his subject and has taken into consideration the new Einstein papers that became available in 2006.

SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE - REVIEW OF CROCA AND MOREIRA'S "NEW APPROACHES TO QUANTUM PHYSICS"

This book left me with an unsettled feeling. New Approaches to Quantum Physics: From Paradoxes to Nonlinearity (2015) has been written for the educated laymen by a couple of scientific dissenters - J R Croca and R N Moreira. In this book, the authors take on the entire physics establishment by attacking directly one of the most cherished thought structures of all time - The Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) of quantum mechanics.

GOING THROUGH THE LETTERS - REVIEW OF LAWRENCE A CUNNINGHAM'S "THE ESSAYS OF WARREN BUFFETT"

It was with some trepidation that I picked up Lawrence A Cunningham's The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Investors and Managers (3rd Ed. 2009). I had heard that the book was mainly a collection of excerpts from Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and I usually find annual reports dry and monotonous.

LIMITATIONS OF MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS - REVIEW OF MEGHNAD DESAI'S "HUBRIS"

A few weeks ago, I watched "How the Economic Machine Works" by hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio on YouTube (see video here). I must confess I found it incomprehensible. Dalio says that consumption drives the economy and for an economy to grow people must consume more and more. I had always thought (as per the Austrian view) that it was savings and investment that drives an economy.

THE INDIAN VALUE INVESTING OPPORTUNITY - REVIEW OF RAHUL SARAOGI'S "INVESTING IN INDIA"

There have been many political, social and historical commentators on India such as Mark Tully, Shashi Tharoor, V S Naipaul and Ramachandra Guha. But very few popular books comment on India from an economic or financial standpoint (One that I can think of offhand is Gurcharan Das's India Unbound (2000) which provides an economic history of post-Independence India).

MANAGING IN INDIA - REVIEW OF RAVI VENKATESAN'S "CONQUERING THE CHAOS"

Ravi Venkatesan's Conquering the Chaos (2013) is written with Western CEOs in mind but I found it an easy read and it was somewhat reminiscent of C. K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2004) (and indeed, Venkatesan does talk of straddling the pyramid).

A HYDROGEN FUTURE? – REVIEW OF VIJAY V VAITHEESWARAN’S “POWER TO THE PEOPLE”

Thomas Huxley has written somewhere: “The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” This quote came to my mind as I read Vijay V Vaitheeswaran’s Power to the People: How the coming energy revolution will transform an industry, change our lives and maybe even save the planet (2007).

AMERICA ON THE DECLINE – REVIEW OF FRIEDMAN AND MANDELBAUM’S “THAT USED TO BE US”

It was with great relish that I had read Thomas L Friedman’s The World is Flat (2005) a few years ago. His recent book, co-authored with Michael Mandelbaum, and titled That Used to be Us: What went wrong with America – and how it can come back (2011) was equally engrossing.

Prior to reading this book, if you had asked me what is wrong with America, I would have said that America is suffering from an overdose of Keynesian economics. Upon reading this book, however, I find that there are other factors involved too.

INDIA’S MARKET MASTERS – REVIEW OF SAURABH MUKHERJEA’S “GURUS OF CHAOS”

I had a brief moment of indecision whether to read Saurabh Mukherjea’s Gurus of Chaos: Modern India’s Money Masters (2015). The book had received a pointedly negative review in Outlook Business magazine and hence I hesitated. But having once picked it up, I found it unputdownable.

GLIMPSES OF MANAGEMENT RULES – REVIEW OF MORGEN WITZEL’S “MANAGEMENT FROM THE MASTERS”

I read with a measure of interest Morgen Witzel’s Management from the Masters: From Kautilya to Warren Buffett (2013). It is an eclectic compilation of “laws” of management right from the “Law of Entropy” which is actually a scientific law to Drucker’s rule which states: “The only valid purpose of a business is to create a customer.” Some other “laws” mentioned in the book are “Moore’s law”, “The Pareto Principle”, “Parkinson’s Law” and “The Peter Principle”.

THE MONK AND THE MAN – REVIEW OF CHATURVEDI BADRINATH’S “SWAMI VIVEKANANDA”

Chaturvedi Badrinath has written a welcome account of one of the greatest sons of India. In his Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta (2006), Chaturvedi Badrinath writes with feeling and devotion about the Swami who popularized the Vedanta in the West.

SELF-REALIZATION – REVIEW OF ECKHART TOLLE’S “A NEW EARTH”

Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual leader who follows no particular tradition, is second in the 2014 Watkins’ list of Spiritually Influential Living People, after the Dalai Lama. I don’t know what that does to his ego, but his work has certainly awakened me to how identified I am with mine.

TRAVERSING HOLY GROUND – REVIEW OF DIANA L ECK’S “INDIA”

Salman Rushdie mentions somewhere (perhaps in Imaginary Homelands (1992)) that India does not exist in reality except in the minds of its people. It is a collective fiction, he says, which has to be maintained by riots and ritual outpouring of blood.

BETTING AGAINST THE HERD – REVIEW OF MICHAEL LEWIS’S “THE BIG SHORT”

Books on the 2008 financial crisis engross me. I believe, as many Austrian economists do, that the 2008 financial crisis was wrought not by excessive deregulation but by the American government’s eagerness to make every American a home-owner and also by moral hazard: if the US had not arranged for the bail-out of Long Term Capital Management in 1998 and further, if not for the “Greenspan put”, Wall Street players would not have taken such huge risks as they did.

LIVING HISTORY – REVIEW OF KEN FOLLETT’S “THE CENTURY TRILOGY”

Ken Follett is well known as a thriller writer and I have read with interest his Eye of the Needle (1978). A few years ago, Follett changed course and started writing historical novels. The Century Trilogy consists of three huge tomes covering the 20th century. The first novel Fall of Giants (2010) covers the period from 1911 to 1924. The second novel Winter of the World (2012) covers 1933 to 1949. The third Edge of Eternity (2014) covers 1961 to 1989.

THE DEADLIEST OF ALL – REVIEW OF SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE’S “THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES”

Some people are of the opinion that cancer is a recent disease, just over a hundred years old, brought about by changes in lifestyle. However, oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee in his Pulitzer-winning The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2011) shows that there are records of cancer over the last five thousand years. Carefully preserved mummies have been studied and diagnosed to be bearing symptoms of cancer.