One of the best books I read in 2021. Though I bought it for the two keywords in the title, it went far beyond that. There’s travelogue, technology, culture and community, future and sometimes even a bit of contemplative philosophy, and together, it provides fantastic perspective and insights into rural China.
Our behaviour at any given point is driven by a whole lot of factors – the immediate neurobiological to events that happened millennia ago. Though this is far from an easy read, Robert Sapolsky peels back the layers to give the reader a better sense of what drives behaviour.
This is an excellent framing for the times we live in. We’re in a complex age, and we continue to try to make it certain and efficient using everything from personality tests to AI. But this is at the risk of losing the things that got us here- from scenario planning to creativity, imagination, and shared understanding. Great perspectives and a very accessible narrative style.
Before the Great War was the Great Game, fought between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia across continents and kingdoms. Peter Hopkirk does a great job of making history accessible, recreating episodes and context for the reader.
The book is more than a decade old, but it does a couple of things well – provide an introduction and in a way, synopsis of Chomsky’s worldview, and do that in an engaging manner because this is based on media interactions. The book was published in 2011, and while the topics might seem dated, the beauty is that his insights are timeless.