THE ONE RIGHT WAY – REVIEW OF PARAG PARIKH’S “VALUE INVESTING AND BEHAVIORAL FINANCE”

Of value investing, it is said, either you get it the first time you are introduced to it, or you never get it. I got hooked to value investing the first time I read an article on it.

Value investors in India would have heard of Parag Parikh, founder-chairman of Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services Ltd (PPFAS) and a value investor to the core. Parag Parikh has written a book Value Investing and Behavioral Finance: Insights into Indian Stock Market Realities (2009) which demystifies investing especially keeping Indian markets in mind.

INDIAN OCEAN STRATEGY – REVIEW OF ROBERT D KAPLAN’S “MONSOON”

Foreign policy experts have paid a lot of attention to Russia, China and the Arab states in recent times. In his book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2010), Robert D Kaplan, a security expert at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, argues that these people are sniffing up the wrong tree. The next big area that is poised to capture American geopolitical attention is the Indian Ocean.

OF MAGIC AND MYSTICISM – REVIEW OF FERNANDO MORAIS’ “PAULO COELHO”

Fernando Morais, an acclaimed biographer from Brazil, has written the “authorized biography” of his fellow Brazilian entitled Paulo Coelho: A Warrior’s Life (2009). Firstly I don’t see why he calls Coelho a warrior. Coelho, for the most part, seems to be tumbling through life rather than navigating through it.

FRAGILE STATE – REVIEW OF M J AKBAR’S “TINDERBOX”

I remember reading, back in my college days, M J Akbar’s India: The Siege Within (1985) with a sense of discovery and excitement. Akbar came across as a stylish writer and I learnt many things about my country’s history from that book. His recent work is Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan (2011) in which he begins the history of Pakistan right from Mahmud of Ghazni’s plunder of Somanath in 1026 and even earlier.

OF AFRICAN BELIEFS: REVIEW OF V S NAIPAUL’S “THE MASQUE OF AFRICA”

V. S. Naipaul came from a remote corner of the earth, a literary abyss, and captured the attention of the world. He wrote a couple of novels – The Mystic Masseur (1957) and Miguel Street (1959) – focusing on his early years in Trinidad. If he had carried on in that vein, he could have become an exemplary tragic-comic storyteller like R K Narayan. Instead he resolved to make the world his stage and strode on it like a colossus, culminating in his Nobel Prize in 2001.

A DECADE OF HIDING: REVIEW OF SALMAN RUSHDIE’S “JOSEPH ANTON”

It was after a long time that I read a Rushdie book. Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012) is a summary of his life – a chapter dwells on his life prior to 14 February 1989 (the day of his fatwa) and the rest of his book is regarding his captive life after the fatwa in which he assumed the name Joseph Anton for reasons of safety.

LOOKING FORWARD: REVIEW OF JAMES RICKARDS’ “THE DEATH OF MONEY”

My last blog post was a review of Eswar S Prasad’s The Dollar Trap: How the US Dollar Tightened Its Grip on Global Finance (2014) (see review here). As I mentioned, Prasad admits the possibility of a dollar crash but is hesitant to work out the triggers. This is carried forward by financial expert James Rickards in The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System (2014). Rickards, an aficionado of complexity theory, intrepidly peers through the curtain and forecasts what looms in front of us.