AN INDICTMENT OF COMMUNISM - REVIEW OF ARCHIE BROWN'S "THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM"

Archie Brown, a British political scientist and historian and emeritus professor at University of Oxford had been studying Communism for forty five years before he started to write the massive The Rise and Fall of Communism (2010) which won the 2010 W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize for Best Political Science Book of the Year.

DISCOVERING THE NICHE MARKET - REVIEW OF CHRIS ANDERSON'S "THE LONG TAIL"

Chris Anderson was the editor of Wired Magazine until 2012. Now he is cofounder and CEO of 3D Robotics, a company producing drones. His book The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand (Updated and Expanded Edition, 2009) was shortlisted for the 2006 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

IDIOSYNCRATIC EXCELLENCE - REVIEW OF NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB'S "ANTIFRAGILE"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007) was, for me, an acquired taste. The first two times I attempted to read the book, I found it mildly unpalatable. But by my third attempt, I found myself agreeing with almost all that he was saying. It had to, sort of, grow on me.

MATHEMATICAL LOGIC IN COMICS - REVIEW OF DOXIADIS AND PAPADIMITRIOU'S "LOGICOMIX"

The graphic novel Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth (2009) by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H Papadimitriou is a unique attempt in literature: mathematical ideas transmitted through the medium of the comic book.

LOSS OF CERTAINTY - REVIEW OF SURI AND BAL'S "A CERTAIN AMBIGUITY"

Every thinking human being tries to build his or her worldview from the store of his or her own experiences or by drawing upon one's reasoning powers or by drinking from the fount of existing wisdom and knowledge. Every human being has a personal philosophy of life and existence even if it were not as sophisticated as that of, say, Bertrand Russell.

Shakespeare has memorably stated: "There are more things in heaven and Earth,..., than are dreamt of in your philosophy." There may come a time in one's life when this worldview gets shattered and one desperately clings to some beliefs, any beliefs. As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum. Some may become devoutly religious, some may become atheists or agnostics, some may find solace in, say, Spinoza's philosophy or Nietzsche's philosophy.

LETTERS ABOUT MATH - REVIEW OF STEVEN STROGATZ'S "THE CALCULUS OF FRIENDSHIP"

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, USA and a well known popularizer of mathematics (along the lines of another great mathematics teacher Ian Stewart). I loved Strogatz's book Sync (2003) which dealt with the topic of synchronization of complex systems in a very readable manner. His research focuses on chaos and complexity and he is famous for coauthoring a 1998 Nature paper on "small-world" networks.

In his book The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life While Corresponding about Math (2009), Strogatz explores the thirty year correspondence he maintained with his high school math teacher Don Joffray.

A LIFE IN TEACHING PHYSICS - REVIEW OF LEWIN AND GOLDSTEIN'S "FOR THE LOVE OF PHYSICS"

As a teacher, I find the most challenging thing is to capture the interest of the students and ignite their creativity and imagination. Walter Lewin, former professor of physics at MIT, USA has been very successful at doing just that. A sampling of his video lectures on YouTube shows how easy it is to be seduced by his approach to teaching physics.

At the end of a long career at MIT, Walter Lewin, along with history professor Warren Goldstein, has written an utterly delightful book For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics (2011) which is almost as good as his video lectures.

THE FOUNDING OF FACEBOOK - REVIEW OF DAVID KIRKPATRICK'S "THE FACEBOOK EFFECT"

I first came to know about Facebook in early 2011 through my students at the university where I teach. I found that they were sharing my class notes and assignment questions on Facebook which was intriguing to me. I wished to know if it was deemed appropriate and "respectable" for a faculty member to be active on Facebook.

A CITADEL FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH - REVIEW OF JON GERTNER'S "THE IDEA FACTORY"

Journalist Jon Gertner has provided a meticulously detailed look at research in one of the world's best incubators of invention in his book The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (2012).

Bell Labs was set up in the 1920s as the research and development wing of AT&T. While a lot of routine development was carried out at Bell Labs to make telephony convenient and affordable, it was also a hub that catalyzed research that ushered in the electronic age.

THE PRIMACY OF ECONOMICS - REVIEW OF LIONEL SHRIVER'S "THE MANDIBLES"

Some novels bring out the truth better than most nonfiction books do. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957), for instance, showed how a nation could collapse if the correct economic policies were not followed. I read it 25 years ago as an engineering undergraduate and I was so profoundly impacted by it that I became a capitalist for life. This was the book that readily came to my mind when I read Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 (2016) recently.

CAPITALISM REBOOTED - REVIEW OF MACKEY AND SISODIA'S "CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM"

In 1970, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman wrote an essay in the New York Times entitled "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits". In this article Friedman criticized businessmen who make employees, communities and the environment their concern. He said, "Businessmen that take seriously their responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution...are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism."

THE EMERGING TRIAD - REVIEW OF RAGHAV BAHL'S "SUPERECONOMIES"

Raghav Bahl, founder of the media company Network18 which he headed until 2014, has written an interesting book entitled SuperEconomies: America, India, China & the Future of the World (2015). The twentieth century after the Second World War was a story of two Superpowers: USA and USSR. After the collapse of the USSR, the USA remained the sole Superpower throughout the 1990s. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century we have been ushered into the realm of SuperEconomies where America has to make room for the BRICS nations (especially China and India) not as "political or military challengers but as economic and diplomatic 'frenemies'". This is the book's central thesis.

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO RICKARDS - REVIEW OF JAMES RICKARDS' "THE ROAD TO RUIN"

James Rickards is an emergent phenomenon in the field of economic futurism. A noted international finance expert, Rickards has written three books which form part of a planned quartet that lays out a bold and compelling vision about the economic vicissitudes facing the world.

In Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (2011) Rickards warned of the ensuing currency wars in the world. A currency war is a situation where several countries simultaneously devalue their money with an ostensible motive of increasing their exports. According to Rickards this is the third currency war in the last hundred years - the first being in the 1930s and the second in the 1970s. Each time the currency wars ended badly so that the present day currency war is being called a "currency suicide".

REFUTATIONS: ARE FRANCIS COLLINS' IDEAS ON TENTERHOOKS? - REVIEW OF TANER EDIS' "SCIENCE AND NONBELIEF"

In my previous blog post, a few weeks ago, I reviewed acclaimed geneticist and present head of the NIH Francis Collins' The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2007). Serendipitously I chanced upon a book by theoretical physicist Taner Edis entitled Science and Nonbelief (2008) which provides a demurral to Collins' evidence. I share Edis' viewpoint here.

A SCIENTIST TURNS TO GOD - REVIEW OF FRANCIS COLLINS' "THE LANGUAGE OF GOD"

Francis Collins, the geneticist who is justly celebrated for having discovered the genetic mutations for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis and Huntington's disease and for heading the Human Genome Project, is also devoutly religious.

In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2007), he lays out his arguments for why any rational person would believe in God. His arguments are for the most part not Christian arguments; they are scientific arguments which any believer should be profoundly aware of.

A HISTORY OF MODERN BIOLOGY - REVIEW OF SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE'S "THE GENE"

Siddhartha Mukherjee, the author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Emperor of All Maladies (2011) (see my review here) is back with his latest book The Gene: An Intimate History (2016). Indian-born Mukherjee graduated from Ivy League institutions in the US and the UK and is now assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University.

METROPOLIS MATTERS - REVIEW OF EDWARD GLAESER'S "TRIUMPH OF THE CITY"

How do you go about picking a book to read? Would you pick up an unknown title written by an untested author? I find some awards are good indicators of the quality of the book. I try to read most of the Booker-awarded or the Booker-shortlisted fiction since they are almost always engaging. In nonfiction, I try to go by the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award (now the FT/McKinsey Award) shortlist.

A book I chanced upon in my University library was Harvard economist Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human (2011) which was, the cover declared, shortlisted for the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year 2011. I knew nothing about the book or the author other than this fact. But yet I found the book eminently readable.

A MASTERPLAN FOR INDIA - REVIEW OF NILEKANI AND SHAH'S "REBOOTING INDIA"

I remember reading Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India (2010) a few years ago with feverish excitement. Here at last was a sane voice amongst a welter of socialist noises - talking about how technology can be used to aid free markets and to cure India's ills. But Imagining India was essentially a proposal with no hard evidence to back it up. Can technology actually accomplish all that Nilekani promised it would? I was skeptical.

In Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations (2015), Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah show the proof of concept of just how technology can go a long way in aiding governance. One of the goals that the authors focus on (among a basket of varied goals) and which I will describe below is reducing graft and streamlining subsidies.

A TREK THOUGH PHYSICS - REVIEW OF HAWKING AND MLODINOW'S "THE GRAND DESIGN"

About a year ago, I tried reading Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004). While it started off well, it soon seemed quite a tedious read. Of course, Greene is recognized the world over as a master expositor of science, so I accept I am solely to blame if I couldn't enjoy the book. I was rather distressed that I was unable to digest a book that was at the cutting edge of physics.

Then I read somewhere that Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life (2011) was as profound as Greene's book though much shorter. When I chanced upon this book in my University library I felt that I had been granted a second chance. And this book, boy, could I digest!