Author: Marta Zaraska
To many of us, eating meat is something that we take for granted. If you have ever wondered whether we have always been this way, or what was the trigger for us to eat meat this book offers lots of insights into that question. Needless to say, this is a question that we will never know the answer for sure, but it is interesting to see the arguments that are made for when and why this happened.
While there may have been nutritious advantages, the author also makes the claim that eating meat indirectly may have also contributed to our modern civilization. The argument goes something like this. Eating meat, tubers and honey allowed us to ingest nutrients much faster. It also required a much smaller gut than what we would need if we only consumed shoots and leaves. The net result is that our gut shrank, giving us more room for a bigger brain. Since we didn't have to chow down large quantities of food, we had more time to socialize and innovate with our fellow human beings.
We seem to have come a full circle now and eating meat may very well be the death of our civilization. It is hard to believe this claim from the author that in terms of global warming, a single burger is equivalent to driving an American car for 320 miles. The amount of natural resources consumed in producing meat is staggering. It apparently takes close to 1800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. Smaller animals consume less, but they are still a far cry from a pure vegetarian diet. There simply isn’t enough natural resources on earth for us all to consume meat at the same level as someone on a Western diet.
The author spends a considerable amount of time exploring the consumption of meat in developing countries like India. It is alarming to learn that, despite the current Indian Government’s ban on eating beef, the Indian population at large is rapidly increasing its intake of meat of all kinds. This same phenomenon is true in most of the countries around the world. So unless something changes, the demand for meat is going to continue to sky rocket. This will only create more inhumane conditions for the animals as we try to build “factories” to produce them with higher efficiencies. Hopefully the western nations can reduce their consumption to offset the increase in the rest of the world. But again, that may be more wishful thinking than reality.
Author: Aasif Mandvi
We all know how difficult it is to make it big as an actor in the US. It is an order of magnitude harder if you are the son of immigrants from India. Aasif chronicles the journey his life takes from India to England and then the US.
The first part of the book deals with Aasif’s childhood in the UK. It is amusing to read about the trials and tribulations of a student in boarding school in England and take comfort in the fact that despite all the bullying Aasif turned out fine in the end. His experience in the US is no cakewalk either as he struggles to make the transition from an Indian Immigrant to a world-famous actor hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrity.
The book is amazingly well-written and is a joy to read. It feels like you are having a conversation with Aasif. Whether it’s a beautiful girl sitting across from him on a train or how his Dad got fired, he will have you hanging onto every word and his self-effacing style will make you break out into a smile. If you are in the mood for some light-hearted entertainment, this is just what the doctor ordered.
Author: Paul Kalanithi
This is one of those books that will touch you deeply and question every notion that you hold on life and death. Paul Kalanithi was a Neurosurgeon among many other things, and all through the book you will mourn the loss the world suffered because he was prematurely taken away from his family and all of us. The candor and honesty with which he chronicles his routine as a student doctor and resident neurosurgeon, will open your eyes to the life and death that most of our doctors have to deal with on a daily basis. While this constant stream of deathly conditions may desensitize most of us, Paul rises above the fold in describing his reactions to the many difficult ailments and surgeries that he conducted.
Paul then takes the ultimate test of dealing with his own failing health as a patient. I have read many a book authored by eminent doctors, filled with information on the human condition, but Paul’s amazing debut takes it to another level. Words seem to flow effortlessly from his pen and you wouldn’t guess that he was racing against time to complete the book. This quote from his book, epitomizes his philosophy, "When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool”.
Author: Magda Szabo
I am always inspired with stories of strong personalities. I recall being blown over in my adolescent years by Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s classic, Fountainhead. In this book the strong willed heroine is the maid, Emerence. She is described as almost super-human and there is a role-reversal in terms of the maid and her employer, Magda. Emerence requires references of the people that she is going to work for. In her words “I don’t wash just anyone’s dirty linen”. Emerence is clearly very good at her job, but she is also very strong willed in terms of her opinions and idiosyncrasies. The book gets into many of these episodes and you find yourself getting sucked into the daily squabbles and eager to find out what exactly is hidden behind the surface of this super-maid. What was her childhood like, what does she do at home when she is not working? Szabo does a really good job of keeping the suspense and you are left guessing to what happens behind closed doors in Emerence’s house.
This is an excellent piece of literature that was originally published in 1987 in Hungary and has won numerous awards. After reading the book, I was curious to see if this was in any way based on Magda’s real life and I was surprised to find out that there are a lot of parallels with the story here. Read it and do your own research!
Author: Nick Lane
If you think you know how life appeared on this planet, this book will make you “think” again. Too often we have accepted the glib explanation that the early earth was a hotbed of gases and liquids and magically single-cellular life came into being. Once you buy that explanation we invoke Darwin’s theory of evolution to extrapolate how 3.8 billion years later you have humans dominating the planet.
The first thing you learn from this book is that the explanation is not so straightforward. Nick Lane is on the hunt to find the road that led to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), which is the most recent organism from which all plants and animals now living on Earth are descended from. What is surprising is that despite the huge diversity in plants, sea creatures, birds and animals we are all composed of cells that look remarkably similar. All of our cells are enveloped by a semi-permeable cell-membrane containing a nucleus with the DNA encoding the genetic code that is propagated through cell division.
First, Nick outlines the huge gap in scientific thinking on the ancestors of the LUCA. There is general agreement in the scientific community that bacteria and archaea were the first to show up on this planet some four billion years ago. Nick explains how at the cellular level all plants and animals are very similar to the LUCA but vastly different from bacteria and archaea. He believes there were structural constraints that prevented bacteria from evolving into more diverse forms. Something happened a couple of billion years ago that gave rise to eukaryotes (cells, enveloped by a membrane with DNA in a nucleus inside). Nick has a theory on how this all happened.
When life first appeared on this planet, it was in the form of single cells like bacteria and archaea. Over the years these evolved but they remained morphologically simple and could not give rise to multi-cellular organisms. Then some two and half billion years ago, a magical event resulted in a bacteria being swallowed by an archeaon. Surprisingly this was a symbiotic event, and they both thrived. The bacteria morphed into mitochondria which is the powerhouse of the cell. The DNA from the bacteria eventually gravitated to form the nucleus and this gave rise to the first eukaryotes — cell with a nucleus — which is the precursor to all the multi-cellular beings that inhabit the earth.
The book is a fascinating read and you realize the big step function that we had to cross to go from bacteria/archaea to the LUCA. Nick goes on to speculate that if we find life on other planets, we are more likely to encounter a single cellular form like what we had four billion years ago. What is amazing is how at the cellular level we are all so similar. Could there have been other instances of life that have simply died out over the years?
