Outliers

Author: Malcolm Gladwell


I had read "Tipping Point" and "Blink" from Malcolm Gladwell and really lapped them up. He has such a well honed writing style that must have come from years of writing articles at the "New Yorker" and "Washington Post" and it is truly a pleasure to read his books. They almost seemed to have a formulaic theme to them. It seemed that Malcolm researched his articles well, extracted some simple observations from them and presented them brilliantly in a very approachable and readable format. So it was no surprise that he was wildly popular and I was determined not to fall for his formula of success, decided not to read his next book "Outliers". I pretty much ignored all the press and positive accolades that it was getting telling myself that this was yet another attempt at using a pseudo-scientific format to lure eyeballs and sell books.

As time passed by I noticed that Outliers was consistently in the Bestseller lists more than 3 years after it had been published. It was being quoted all over the place and what really pushed me over the edge was Daniel Pink in his book "Drive" put Outliers as one of the 15 essential books to read. So, I finally relented and borrowed the book from the library. Malcolm did not disappoint. As before he has created an eminently readable book with some very interesting nuggets about the quirks of selection that we have in the world today. He very effectively argues how many of the top athletes, singers and businessmen are the result of inordinate amount of practice. While I don't recall seeing the phrase "practice makes perfect" in his book, Malcolm underscores the importance of not just a few hours of practice, but thousands of hours. The key really being that most of the folks who are at the top of their game, had to have had thousands of hours of practice before reaching their prime and he methodically sets out to make that case in his book.

I do concur with Daniel Pink, that Outliers is a must read and will change the way you think about superstars and how they have got there.

Drive

Author: Daniel H. Pink



Any manager worth his salt would like to know how to motivate his team, and I was hooked as soon as I read the synopsis for this book. The sub-title is "The surprising truth about what motivates us" and I am sure many of you would like to know the answer. There are a couple of key points that this book makes, one of which is that the carrot and stick methodology of motivating people is out-dated. Daniel Pink goes to some length to establish some terminology here and he coins the term Motivation 2.0 for the carrot and stick philosophy that drove the Industrial Revolution and still persists in most companies today. Motivation 2.0 is summed up well in this quote "The way to improve performance, increase productivity and encourage excellence was to reward the good and punish the bad". The author then goes on to prove to the reader why Motivation 2.0 does not work today and is incompatible with the many new business models that are at play today.

He coins the term Motivation 3.0 for the principles that we must use to motivate ourselves and our teams in the world we live in today. He argues that in a developed society what humans crave more than anything else is ownership, accountability and the satisfaction of making a difference with what they do with their lives. There are many examples of companies and individuals who have adopted a flexible workplace schedule and given their employees the freedom of managing their own space and time. The book also contains some specific tips, hints, and reading materials for us to get further on the road to Motivation 3.0.

I recommend this book for anyone who is managing a group, coaching a team or raising kids. Does this cover most of the planet ?

To Kill a Mockingbird

Author: Harper Lee


My foray into classic American literature continues with this book. On picking it up, I felt how lucky I was to read this now, as a mature adult. Most of my fellow US citizens probably read this book when they were in high-school. Harper Lee has written a timeless novel that has all the ingredients to make it a classic. She describes a small town in Alabama in the 1930s where you not only have racial prejudices, but also have a big divide between "city dwellers" and those who live outside its precincts. All of this is described very candidly by a seven year old. There is enough written and said about this book and I won't be adding much value by describing the storyline.

Harper Lee has taken a complex issue like race relations in the early twentieth century and rendered it so very simply through the eyes of a little child. The book is a joy to read and I was intrigued to learn more about the author and find out if there were any other books that she had written. To my surprise I found that this was her only novel and that it was based on her early early childhood. Her dear friend in the book is also her friend in real-life and it is none other than Truman Capote, the author of "Breakfast at Tiffanys". Real life or fiction, Harper Lee has written a gem of a novel that has withstood the test of time. In 2006, the British Librarians ranked this book ahead of the Bible in the list of books that every individual should read before they die; if you haven't read it yet do so before it's too late.

The Emperor of all Maladies

Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee



When I first saw this title, I recoiled in horror at the thought of reading a book on cancer. One of my primary motivations for reading is entertainment, and I found it hard to convince myself that a book on a topic like "cancer" would fit the bill. The fact that this book won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2011 was not lost on me and so I read a few reviews of the book on amazon. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I pulled the trigger and ordered the book.

Once I started reading the book, I was simply blown away. I expected the book to be high on educational content, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that Siddhartha is a very accomplished writer and his prose was like butter. He describes the history of cancer with a personal touch that makes you feel that he rubbed shoulders with some of the early pioneers. He walks you through the evolution of knowledge on the cause and treatment of cancer like a mystery novel. There's a fair amount of description and debate on public policy on Cancer Research. Siddhartha devotes a good portion of the novel on the Laskerites and the effort that they put into getting Federal funding for Cancer Research. While this helped the treatment of cancer, there were many skeptics who felt that this was only encouraging more trial and error treatment, that would come up short in our understanding of Cancer. James Watson, one of the scientists who was responsible for the seminal work on DNA summed it up best when he said "we must reject the notion that we will be lucky. … Instead we will be witnessing a massive expansion of well-intentioned mediocrity."

The book is anything but mediocre, and is definitely enlightening. You learn that not all cancer is the same; cancer is very much our normal cell dividing activity gone haywire; different kinds of cancer require different kinds of treatment; several forms of cancer have very good remedies.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to folks who have a scientific bent and are eager to learn about what makes cancer special.