Category: Books

  • Guns Germs & Steel

    Jared Diamond

    One of my favourite books in recent times has been Sapiens – it did a fantastic job of showing how the species ascended to the apex position in evolutionary biology. A vertical journey, so to speak. But why didn’t all humans, spread across various continents, develop equally in terms of civilisation and technology? To use the book’s blurb, “why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe?” In the modern world, why does an Africa or even a large part of Asia have to work hard to catch up with the western world? That’s what the book seeks to answer.

    It does that by asking very interesting questions. For instance, why is it that the Spanish conquered South American empires, and not the other way? The book doesn’t stop at the proximate answers – horses, weapons, germs etc- but keeps asking a series of questions for the answers that come up. Even beyond the time that recorded human history begins. To when the species first made their appearance on the planet – in Africa- and how slowly they made their way to different parts of the globe.

    Primarily, four factors have ultimately caused the disparity in the fortunes of various peoples- how early they started, the difference in the environment and biogeography of the areas they populated (what plants and animals there could be domesticated to scale up food production and create the surplus needed for new skills and ideas to develop), the spread of ideas (the fascinating aspect of how the axis of the continent – except for Eurasia, all continents have a north south axis – plays a large role in why a large number of major civilisations and developments occurred in this part of the world), and the densities of population that allowed competing societies within continents to come up with radical ideas.

    In addition, there are also related interesting ideas. For example, how invention is actually the mother of necessity (examples of how some inventions had been made before, but are credited to the person/s who made the right tweak at the right time for others to adopt it in large numbers) and how some non-intuitive solutions have endured (e.g. the QWERTY keyboard).

    All of this make for a fascinating, if not easy read. Even though it was published a couple of decades ago, I think it is an important book for this time because it shows how evolutionary determinism is not just about genes, but the environment as well.

    P.S. I do wish he had spent some pages on how the British could conquer India. The only clue he does drop is how India’s environment might have created a caste system which prevented the creation and proliferation of ideas it otherwise might have had.

  • A Man Called Ove

     

    Fredrik Backman

    This was a book selected by D (my much better half) as part of our once-in-two-months book shopping. So naturally, I couldn’t just read it, I had to read into it. The message was simple, I had a lot of character similarities with Ove. It was less to do with his literally hands-on approach to fixing things and more to do with “right has to be right”, but the similarities in personality were obvious enough right from the beginning for me to LOL.

    This is probably the only book that has made me go from smile to laugh to moist eyes in a span of 30 pages. Smile because I understood Ove’s perspective and why he does the things he does. As it turns out, Ove isn’t bitter. “He just didn’t go around grinning the whole time!” Laugh because the insults and reactions are hilarious and creatively sharp. And cry because. Oh wait, that’d be a spoiler, so no.

    The slow reveal of Ove’s not-so-typical heart of gold, as people keep popping into his life, is really done well. And it’s not just Ove, the other characters, especially Parvaneh, have been written very well. In general, the main reason the book worked for me, outside of the excellent humour, was its solid understanding of its protagonist’s condition, and its commentary of the changing nature of society and its mores. There is something profound that is being delivered here – on life, youth and aging, death – but with a gentle touch. That’s probably what makes the book so heartwarming and such a pleasure to read.

  • Enlightenment Now

    Steven Pinker

    “The case for reason, science, humanism and progress” – a part of the book’s title, did make me wonder whether there is a use case for this book at all. Especially 450 pages. After all, isn’t this self obvious? Evidently not! I haven’t read “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, the book the author wrote before this on the same premise, but apparently this book works as a rebuttal against all the criticism raised against the former. To note, “Enlightenment Now” works completely fine as a standalone work, one that needs to be read.

    The author begins on a very philosophical note, a question raised by a student during a lecture – “Why should I live”? He gives a brief answer that touches upon not just the opportunities available to an individual to progress and flourish, but because of her/his sense of empathy, also allow her/him to help others do the same.

    What enables this are the four concepts I mentioned in the first sentence. They are what the author calls the ideals of the Enlightenment, and through this book he aims to restate them in the context of the present.

    In the first three chapters the author writes about what Enlightenment is, what drives it, and what the forces acting against it are. One among them is this – even though one might agree to it in principle, one would never agree that it would work in practice. I have to admit, I am one of those.

    But before getting to that, some praise for the next seventeen chapters, which are all about the remarkable progress that we have achieved as a species. From life itself (mortality, life expectancy rates) to economic growth and reduction in poverty to the environment to wars to human rights to life satisfaction, the author uses reason backed by data to show how this is indeed the best time to be, and how it’s only going to get better. The data in itself does seem irrefutable, though to borrow from Ronald Coase, I do not know how much it has been tortured to confess.

    Even if I assume the data represents the whole picture, I cannot ignore the malaise of angst that I see around me, really and virtually. Is that an availability bias? Quite possible, but why is it increasing if the world is consistently improving?

    Is it really accurate to depict the Trump election as an aberration when across many democracies, the tide seems to be the same. Even if the high tide of economies helps all boats rise, not all of them will rise equally. Would they compare themselves to their own past or the current circumstances of those around them?

    And I think that forms the crux of my skepticism for the book – the individual experience. Our hopes, our attachments, our relationships are not always represented in the indices of society’s progress as a whole. Also, we are measuring the past with parameters we have now thought up, who knows what kind of indices later generations will think of. The graphs then might show that while we had collectively progressed as a civilization, we had failed on other fronts.

    In summation, I am reminded of the nuanced difference between the two kinds of victories – vijaya (victory over others) and jaya (victory over self). While the data shows the first against the collective ills that torment us, the second is probably what will give us the enlightenment that will finally make us happy.

  • The Master Switch

    Tim Wu

    Wow!
    Two of my favourite books in the recent past have been The Moral Animal and The Sovereign Individual. I liked them because they brought out the fundamental patterns that underlie the evolution and behaviour of humans and the system of the world respectively. The Master Switch does the same with communication and information empires.

    His premise is this – history has shown that communication/information technologies follow a predictable path : it starts as an idea in a mind/group of minds typically in a small room, is then brought to life in the most rudimentary manner, and keeps itself open to improvements and changes until it becomes a solid proposition. It then shifts to industrial scale, predictable outputs, and controlled by a corporation which then decides to make it a closed system. He calls this the Cycle.

    The author’s contention is that all information businesses go through the cycle. The question he seeks to answer is “which is mightier : the radicalism of the Internet or the inevitability of the Cycle?” He gets there by taking us through the history of information empires.

    The story begins in the 1870s, when Alexander Graham Bell’s small telephone company goes up against the ruler of the times – Western Union. A classic underdog story that resulted in the continuing empire that is called AT&T. Is At&T still the hero? Will get to that in a bit. Similar stories with its own heroes and villains then play across radio (AM & FM), television, movies and now, the internet.

    It is not just the magnificent scope that makes the book interesting. The author retells history in the mould of a thriller! There are anecdotes and (not so) trivia that make the book really engaging. Multiple inventors of the same technology (and uncredited firsts), towering personalities from JP Morgan to Steve Jobs who left a firm imprint, fascinating origin stories of movie studios like Universal and Warner that are now household names and how movie making is now less to do with the movie and more to do with the business of the franchise (a movie is a 2 hour advertisement of an intellectual property which makes money through a franchise that sells everything from tshirts to DVDs to theme parks), companies that rise again like phoenixes in revenge arcs that span a century (GE buying Universal)!

    The author obviously does not give a definitive answer to whether the Internet will beat the Cycle. He suggests a constitutional approach (not regulatory) and a “Separations Principle” to make sure that the ownership of information creation, distribution (networks, infrastructure) and access control remains with different parties to prevent it from corporate or governmental misuse. The nuance he highlights is that the monopoly actually begins and even continues with noble intentions and utopian values, but loses the plot subsequently. Almost like “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” (Remember the question earlier about AT&T)
    He also points out (and this is where it meets The Sovereign Individual) that the user has the power to control how this plays out – “Habits shape markets far more powerfully than laws”.

    A fantastic read on multiple counts!

  • Tales From Firozsha Baag

    Rohinton Mistry

    A literally crappy beginning does make you wonder how this book is going to play out, but in a few pages, you understand this was only literally. However, what it also points out is the author’s ability to make the mundane very interesting. Eleven intertwined stories that create a vivid world whose unique characters the reader is able to identify and relate to, though they might be far different from the self or those around.

    A theme that I felt was running strong through all the stories was one of identity – at both collective and individual levels. There is obviously the Parsi way of life, and their interactions with the world at large. Without really resorting to stereotypes or tropes, the author is able to bring out the way of life and the struggle between its past and future through various characters, and their relationships and interactions. At an individual level, for example, Jaakaylee who was Jacqueline identifies herself as the former after 49 years of working among Parsis who called her that. Many stories bring out the tussle between generations as children grow up and understand the need for changes in their way of thinking and living if they are to survive in the world, even as parents cling on to traditions and cannot understand the need for change. The author uses Kersi’s character at both the personal and collective levels to show how life shifts with time.

    Two of my favourite stories are “Of white hairs and cricket” and “Lend me your light”. Both star Kersi and are points in his life that make him realise how the world he inhabits is constantly shifting, and he cannot always hold on to the things he thought were eternal. The last paragraph in the first story is something I could wholly relate to – when one feels precious things slipping through fingers and is powerless to stop it. I think anyone who has had to leave a place they considered home will be able to relate to the second story – the array of mixed feelings when one has to leave, when one has to visit even for a short time, and the idea of being a stranger in one’s own home.

    There is an excellent skill of observation that has been put to good use in all the stories, and a remarkable sensitivity that is evident in the writing. The writing technique somehow feels rich even when writing about the ordinary days of a life, and somehow, despite that, or maybe because of it, one feels that these are people one might actually know already.