Reviews of two (very) short books on China, as we explore the world, with a closer lens.
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How should one rethink travel and culture? How do we really learn about places we visit? I review a “lost” treasure-set of books. Notes on Borges and death, La Jetée that influenced the birth of Science Fiction cyber punk, and rediscovering Ancient classics.
Leave a CommentFive personal lessons from the life of President Truman — from forecasting to forthrightness — from the excellent biography by David McCullough.
Leave a CommentWhat the underrated Poltergeist tells us about our past and our future. Tying into two excellent books from 2017, and the principle of scientific management.
Leave a CommentParis to the Moon is a love letter, exquisite and heartfelt. It is not one that a pining star-crossed lover writes, but one a soldier writes to family back home. The Paris of lovers is well-trodden. Paris to the Moon describes the Paris of a writer with a young family. Gopnik’s penchant for adorning unremarkable happenings with remarkable witticism makes the book lovely. In the midst of absurdities and abstractions, swimming pools and schools, gyms and dinner plates (mellow and varnished like an old violin), never-ending dossiers, parks and pregnancy, politics and futbol, Adam Gopnik, all the while failing miserably to prevent his son from learning about Barney, reflects on our forlorn life away from home, even as we are having…
Leave a CommentHighlighting some books that I loved reading in 2018. These are not necessarily books that were published in 2018. (Before I get into the list, I loved three wonderful books by my colleagues this year: The Customer Centricity Playbook by Peter Fader and Sarah Toms, Never Stop Learning by Brad Staats, and The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust by Kevin Werbach. I am finishing the last one now). Business and Society: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most unputdownable book of the year. Here is my Review. The Great A&P and Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson is an excellent way to understand Amazon and its challenges. Automation and Artificial…
Leave a CommentTsundoku / Anti-Library of 2018 This is the year in which the exquisitely fine word Tsundoku entered our lexicon. So, the end of the year is a good time to evaluate the dreams for future reading. I don’t buy books impulsively much, but there is always a running list I would like to buy. In some sense, my tsundoku is my anti-library. It appears that I will fall short of my 2018 reading goal (here is my reading list for 2018), but this is only a good thing in Umberto Eco’s view of the Library of life. Life is short, there are always miles to go and promises to keep. Here are the recent books that are hovering on my radar and beckoning…
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