GOING TOO FAST - REVIEW OF THOMAS L FRIEDMAN'S "THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE"

Towards the end of his book Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations (2016) noted journalist Thomas L Friedman states: "I am a socially liberal, deeply patriotic, pluralism-loving, community-oriented, fiscally moderate, free-trade-inclined, innovation-obsessed environmentalist-capitalist." Now that is a statement after my own heart! This is a kind of human being I could aspire to be!

TWO BOOKS ON EDUCATION - REVIEW OF "DISRUPTING CLASS" AND "BLENDED"

Clayton M Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School, shot to prominence with his book The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (1997). In this book he first came up with the concept of "disruptive innovation" which has proved very influential in understanding business and technological trends.

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and eventually disrupts an existing market displacing established firms in the process.

ECONOMICS FOR CHILDREN - REVIEW OF ROOPA PAI'S "SO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ECONOMICS"

A few days ago, I took my son to a children's book fair in his school. Amongst the colourful collection of Geronimo Stiltons, Captain Underpants, Wimpy Kids and Nancy Drews, one book caught my attention. It was titled So You Want to Know About Economics (2017) by an author I had not previously heard of, Roopa Pai.

THE RIGHT VIEW OF ECONOMICS - REVIEW OF SCHIFF AND SCHIFF'S "HOW AN ECONOMY GROWS AND WHY IT CRASHES"

About a couple of years ago, I saw a YouTube video entitled How the Economic Machine Works by billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio (see video here). Dalio's vision of the economy left me nonplussed. He seemed to be saying that spending drives the economy and that the central banks could effectively bring us out of recessions by manipulating interest rates.

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.