Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Author: John Carreyrou

I thought I knew most of the interesting details of the Theranos disaster. So when I picked this book up, I quickly paged through it to see if it was really worth reading. Boy, was I in for a surprise. Not only is there a lot of dramatic detail, but John Carreyrou has narrated it so beautifully that it is a joy to read. From the first to the last page it held my complete attention and read like a thriller even though I knew exactly how it ended. 

John’s meticulous research is evident throughout the book, and he tries to keep a balanced view wherever possible. Every chapter in the book is relevant to the story and he avoids the temptation to fill pages by invoking some side stories that might be interesting. He could afford this luxury, as he has an action packed tale to tell.  Once you start reading this book, you will find it hard to put down.

Immigrant, Montana

Author: Amitava Kumar

I am shocked to see the long list of praise from all the editorial reviews on the Amazon page for this book. People called it "cerebral" and "sensual". To me it was just a series of affairs. 

From the author's point of view its the story of an american immigrant from india who is a grad student and a teaching assistent. However, unlike most of the Indians who come to the US for higher studies, the protagonist has come to America to have sex with white women.  

There's some interesting lines like students in India are forced to memorize Wordsworth's poems "about daffodils without having a clue of what those flowers looked like".  Another line I liked was a comment describing a Starbucks at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. "People come here with their bladders full and their gas tanks empty".

I found the authors use of footnotes rather strange. It seems like something he wrote in the main body, but later decided to demote as a footnote. I could not figure out if it was important to read the footnote or whether it was an unnecessary digression in the narrative. 

Overall, the book fell flat for me.

The Beautiful Cure: The Revolution in Immunology and What It Means for Your Health

Author: Daniel M. Davis

Our immune system is getting a lot of attention these days. This book takes us down the path of history, tracing the development of immunology in humans. It reads like a mystery novel with a bunch of characters, some working together and others competitvely to solve the puzzle of how our immune system works. 

He shares with us the story of James Allison, whose groundbreaking work led to the discovery of T cells, a crucial component of the immune system. Then he describes the resiliency of the naked mole rat, which exhibits remarkable immunity to cancer. 

Davis incudes the stories of many individuals whose lives have been transformed by immunotherapy. These anecdotes serve as windows into the human side of immunology, offering readers a glimpse into the passion, perseverance, and curiosity that drive scientific discovery.

Finally, he makes us aware of the delicate balance that the immune system must maintain to make sure that it does not turn against the body. Any over-reach here results in the auto-immune diseases. many of which we have a first hand experience of.

Overall, Davis blends scientific insights with compelling stories that both educate and captivate the reader.

A State of Freedom: A Novel

Author: Neel Mukherjee

Neel Mukherjee made me squirm and hold my head in my hands while reading several parts of this novel. To call it gut-wrenching feels inadequate. I would take it a step further and say he scoops out all of your insides and lays it bare in front of you to confront.

Now having got that out of the way, this is a great exposé of the vast class differences that are in plain sight in everyday India.  Our lack of curiosity or maybe the fact that there is so little free intercourse between the classes, has resulted in keeping these stories in the dark.  We see many of the protagonists in our daily lives as maids, cooks, road-side entertainers or construction workers and Neel paints their hand-to-mouth existence in full technicolor. Neel delves into their past to describe how they got to this particular station in their lives. The poverty they were born into and then their displacement; sometimes out of necessity and other times by choice.

While this is a novel, I can attest through my personal experience in India that the descriptions are frighteningly realistic and that is why it hurts so much to read this book. Neel has the skill that makes for a great author. He observes small things and describes them vividly, making the reader picture the stark reality and daily struggle of the poor in India.

The beauty of the book is the way he has laid out the narrative as 5 separate vignettes whose interconnection becomes evident in the end. This framework allows him to tell the story from a different point of view in each case and immerse you in the action. Each of the stories can be read independently and if you have to pick one, I recommend story #2.  Be warned that the subsequent stories are not for the faint of heart.

Author: Esi Edugyan

“When you free, [if] someone ask you a question, you ain’t got to answer”. I paused when I read this and went over it a few times in my head. It’s something that we take for granted these days and the only time it shows up now is when someone  invokes their right by way of the Fifth Amendment of the US constitution.

Esi Edugyan spins quite a tale that starts in a sugar plantation in Barbados in the 1830’s and meanders all across the globe. I won’t say where she takes you as that will give away some of the drama that the author builds up through the four sections of the book. The first section has all the harrowing details of slavery that was very hard for me to read. Once you get past that,  you should fasten your seatbelt as you are in for a wild ride. The book is very well written and I found myself rooting for Washington Black all the way to the end.

The Fifth Risk

Author: Michael Lewis

I’m a big fan of Michael Lewis. He has a writing style that is the Goldilocks “Just Right” portion for me. He describes the essence of the technical details without getting too much into the nitty gritty complexity that can bog you down. Additionally he is a great writer who keeps you hooked by telling stories of interesting people. 

This book was probably written as a way for him to cope with the outrageousness of the Trump transition to President of United States. He focuses on the many departments of federal government, whose role is not evident to most of the population. For example, the Department of Energy is responsible for preventing nuclear disasters and these can come in many different forms as Michael is only too eager to describe. Similarly the Department of Agriculture (USDA) includes food safety, nutrition programs, rural development, etc. 

The final section delves into the huge data that is collected by the US government through all its different functions and how clueless US politicians are on their purpose. For example the Department of Commerce  includes the National Weather Service (NWS) that is responsible collecting all the data that goes into predicting our daily weather. Apparently one of the congressmen asked why taxpayers need to fund the NWS as he could simply get his weather from Accuweather. But guess where Accuweather gets the data from which it makes the predictions on the weather? It is from the NWS.  He also describes how Trump nominated Barry Meyers, the owner of Accuweather, to be appointed as the head of the NOAA (NWS is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). This would have turned out to be a major conflict of interest that was averted by Myers withdrawing his nomination.

21 Lessons for the 21st Centrury

Author: Thomas Hager

One of my all-time favorite books is “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. The story behind that book is that he published the collection of notes that he made to teach young college students history. After reading Sapiens, I had no doubt in my mind, that Yuval had a firm grasp and a strong opinion on the history of the world.  Yuval followed that up with “Homo Deus” where he took all the lessons from history to predict what our future would look like. Unfortunately, I was not a believer and consequently didn’t really enjoy that book. 

With this one, Yuval decided to pick 21 important topics and write essays on them. Some of them are “Disillusionment”, “Work”, “Liberty”, “Equality”, “Community”, “Civilization”, “Religion”, “Immigration”, “Culture”, “Justice”, “Post-Truth” and “Meaning”. 

Work:

He talks about the rise of a new “useless class”.  He fears that in the twenty first century there will be revolts against the economic elite, not because they are exploiting people, but more because they don’t need people anymore. He cites the example of Orthodox Jews in Israel who don’t work, but derive a basic income from the state. The surprising conclusion is that they are actually quite contented. So is this the future for the masses whose jobs have been displaced?  Sorry, I am not a big fan of this outome.

Liberty:

He worries that Big Data Algorithms might extinguish liberty and create some of the most unequal societies that mankind has ever faced. All the wealth and power will be concentrated in the hands of a few elite people, while the majority of the world will end up being irrelevent.

Equality:

Hunter-gatherers were the most egalitarian society. Agriculture allowed us to have property which gave rise to inequality. Today, the

- Richest 1% own half the worlds wealth

- Richest 100 people have more wealth than poorest 4 billion

There is a deep-seated thread that runs throughout the book about the Biotech and Infotech revolutions coming together. The author predicts a world where the deepest secrets of life will be deciphered and made available through big data analytics to understand and predict every aspect of your life. It will be so all encompassing that most of the brainpower in the planet will be rendered obsolete. Since our brains take up a lot of energy to operate it may make sense to simply shut them down and get rid of them. “Matrix” anyone?

Community:

He makes some observations that make me stop and reflect on what’s happening around me:

In the name of "sharing experiences," people are encouraged to understand what happens to them in terms of how others see it. If something exciting happens, the gut instinct of Facebook users is to pull out their smartphones, take a picture, post it online, and wait for the "likes." In the process they barely notice what they themselves feel. Indeed, what they feel is increasingly determined by the online reactions to their post. 

A key point in this chapter is “a crucial step toward uniting humankind is to appreciate that humans have bodies”.  Any technological advances that only satisfy online needs are insufficient as they don’t take care of our physical needs around companionship and community.

Civilization:

“The people we fight most often are our own family members. Identity is defined by conflicts and dilemmas more then by agreement”. He cites the example of the many different countries in an Olympics and how they all have similar flags, national anthems, passports, rules of engagement, financial systems, etc. He observes that “this seeming competition between nations actually represents an astonishing global agreement”. He goes on to say that “Though humankind is far from constituting a harmonious community, we are all members of a single rowdy global civilization”. Of course, this chapter is followed by one on Nationalism.

Religion:

In ancient times, religion was used for everything from Science to Policy to Identity.  In terms of both Science and Economic policy, the world has pretty much one standard which has no bearing on your religious preferences. However, religion still plays a dominant role in Identity. Almost every country on this planet has a dominant religion that plays an oversize role in shaping the identity of its citizens.

Immigration:

I love the way Yuval breaks things down into three major points and then applies a rigorous logical argument to each point. With immigration it is

1. Should we let people in

2. What criteria do we use to let them in

3. Should they assimilate with the local culture

Culture:

Yuval looks at the distinction between race and culture. While the core tenets of racism, like biological differences have been squashed by recent scientific developments, the notion that we all have unique cultural backgrounds is very much alive and present. He points out that traditional racism is waning and the world is now full of “culturists” which have both good and bad consequences. Culture is more malleable than biology, so present-day culturists may be more tolerant than the racists of the past. 

Ignorance:

He argues that what gave humans our power, is not just our individual rationality, but more signficantly our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups. Power distorts anything that comes near it much like a Black Hole distorts anything in its gravitational field. This is why powerful people are surrounded by sycophants who are mostly telling them what they want to hear. For powerful people to be exposed to new ideas they have to be willing to spend time at the periphery which can be wasteful as well. This is a dilemma for which Harari does not offer any solutions.

Justice:

Human morality has evolved over the course of millions of years. The problem is not the set of values for which we have no dearth of. The problem lies in implementing these in a complex world. Early civilizations had only to face the dilemmas that their had community to deal with. Today, we have to come up wtih a code that is meaningful for the billions of people that inhabit the entire planet. “Justice demands not just an abstract set of values, but also an understanding of the concrete cause-and-effect relations”, which is almost untractable in the world we inhabit today. One sobering thought from this section is “Even if you personally belong to a disadvantaged group, … that doesn’t mean you understand the viewpoint of all other such groups”. Climate change is a great example of a common outcome that people across the world have different viewpoints on. 

Post-Truth:

“Homo-Sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions”. He soundly equates Religion with Fake News. “When a thousand people believe a made-up story for one month — that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years — that’s a religion.” This is not to say that religion is useless. It can be very useful in bringing people together and making them unite and fight against the collective enemy. He also talks about how humans have the remarkable ability to both know and not know at the same time. More precisely, humans know something when they really spend the time to focus and think deeply about it. However, most of the time, they don’t really think about it, so they just follow the common path. Money or sports are good examples of made-up stuff. We all know that, but we treat them as super real.

Meaning:

This is a philosophical treatise on the many different attempts throughout human history to give meaning to our lives. To most people this involves a story. Yuval argues that Homo sapiens are by nature, storytelling animals who think in terms of stories rather than numbers and equations. He says “most people who go on identity quests are like children going on a treasure hunt: they find only what their parents have hidden for them in advance.”

Harari’s knowledge of the world, both past and present, is impressive and he brings it to bear in this chapter on the “meaning of life”.  His cultural references are also on-point. In describing the futility of the Hindu belief of rebirth he throws in the cultural norm of women arguing with their mothers-in-law, and having to do it all over again every time they are reborn.  He also knows that a Hindu who supports the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, would consider himself a pious person. Monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) are more intolerant and have wrought far more death and destruction than polytheistic religions (Hinduism, Incas). While he delves into the stories that different religions have come up with to create a foundation for a belief system, he is able to see how even the “no story” approach of Buddhism can take on a meaning of it’s own and justify the killing and persecution of people following other religions.

Meditation:

The final chapter on Meditation is a way for him let the readers “know which hues colour the glasses through which I see the world, thereby distorting my vision and my writing”. He points out that asking the question of what happens after you die, is implicitly making the assumption that there is something that you endures from your birth to your death.  He argues that we don’t have this constancy and are constantly changing from one moment to the next. Our mind is constantly moving from one thing to another and often our reactions are to the sensations that we experience in our body. Modern technology has not yet figured out how our mind works and he has found medidation to be very useful in this cotext. Yuval has personal experience with Vipassana which he describes as a “way to observe body sensations and mental reactions to sensations in a methodical, continuous and objective manner, thereby uncovering the basic patterns of the mind.”

In summary, this book is both enlightening and entertaining. I am thinking of reading it again in a few years to see how well it fares with the passage of time.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Author: Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah was born on February 20, 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa when apartheid was alive and kicking. In his retelling of his childhood experiences he puts us smack dab in Johannesburg of the eighties, but with a humorous twist. 

You can see how Trevor must have been born with a great sense of humour. The title refers to the fact that Trevor was born to a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss-German father during a time when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. He shares many humorous stories about navigating his identity as a mixed-race child, often using language as a tool to connect with different communities. He recounts his various childhood entrepreneurial ventures from selling pirated CDs to DJing at parties.

All through the book, you get to see the huge role his mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah played in his life. There are stories where he had run-ins with the law and the bullying and other challenges he faced as a bi-racial child attending schools with predominantly black or white kids. 

By combining humor, wit and insightful commentary, Trevor is able to bring to life the tumultuous period of South Africas history. Listen to the audiobook and you will both be entertained and educated at the same time.

The Heart: A History

Author: Thomas Hager

Sandeep Jauhar is another famous Doctor-Author of mine. I first read his book on the sorry plight of doctors in the US and was shocked to learn the details of how much money the US was spending on terminal care. This book is a history on arguably most important organ in the human body, our heart. 

There is a healthy mix of history and interesting information about the heart, some of which I made a note of

• The heart naturally beats on its own and can continue to beat for weeks after an animal is dead
• The French Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel demonstrated that a properly nourished chick heart tissue cultured in a medium of blood plasma and water will pulsate for months and can remain  alive for more than 20 years
• Strong emotions can have a lasting impact on the health of our heart. There’s apparently a technical term for this “takotsubo cardiomyopathy” or broken-heart syndrome. Severe emotional trauma or stress can cause the heart to balloon up and in extreme cases stop beating altogether resulting in cardiac arrest.
• Cardiac tamponade is when fluid fills in the pericardium (sac around the heart) and puts pressure on the heart preventing it from filling up. The solution is to pierce a needle into the pericardial sac and suck out the fluid. Reminded me of the scene in pulp fiction where John Travolta jabs a syringe into Uma Thurman’s chest, which unusurprisingly has no medical basis!

In summary, this book is well written and very informative.

Algorithms to Live by

Author: Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

The authors attempt to translate algorithms from computer science to relate to problems that we encounter in our daily life. The first couple of chapters are compelling and keep with this theme. The subsequent ones, seemed more inclined towards explaining computer science algorithms and their parallels in our everyday life. They were interesting to folks like me who knew the algorithms only from a computer science perspective. The book gave me a whole new way to look at some of the workhorses of computer science like sorting, searching, queueing, etc. However, they did little in terms of being useful in my everyday life. 

Let me start with my most favorite part of the book which is the chapter on the Optimal Stopping Problem. It is algorithmically well established that if you have to select a candidate from a large number of unknown candidates, you are best served by letting the first 37% go by, and then choosing the first one that is better than all the prior candidates. You can apply this to renting or buying a house, finding a parking spot, choosing a secretary or even more importantly choosing your mate. The last one might need some tweaking if you account for the fact that your choice may not resonate with the other person.

The chapter on sorting is interesting as well and highlights the trade off between the time spent upfront sorting your entries versus the time spent later on searching for the items that you’re interested in. This might be useful when you are considering whether to carefully file away your notes in some well defined way, or simply make it searchable, like I do, so you pay for it marginally while trying to retrieve the right piece of information.

The chapter on Bayes’s rule gives some good insights into human behavior. I could not agree more with the authors that “what we project about the future reveals a lot — about the world we live in, and about our own past”. The more prior information we have about a problem the more likely we are to be biased about the future. The proliferation of social media might exacerbate this problem as fake news can spread quickly and skew our internal statistics of experience.  

Another useful reminder from the authors is Occam’s razor principle which says that the simplest possible hypothesis is probably the right one. 

Overall, this is a great read for the algorithmically inclined. The best parts are in the first few chapters. Stick around for the rest if you are a nerdy computer scientist. 

The Long Haul: A Truckers Tales of Life on the Road

Author: Finn Murphy

This was one of my first audiobooks, and boy, was I in for a treat. The narrator is the author himself and there’s something to be said about listening to a memoir in the authors own voice. Finn Murphy dropped out of the University of Colorado in the late 1970s and stumbled into a career as a long-haul trucker. 

He shares many anecdotes about the trucking industry starting with the seventies and all the way to the more recent complexities of the rules and regulations that govern truckers today. His stories bring out the life of truckers, how important the rest stops are and how they combat loneliness on the road. There are many humorous adventures that are sprinkled throughout the book and some of them are quite thought-provoking especially when he talks about the dynamics between the trucker, the labor he employs and the rich customers that he serves. 

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this audio book and have recommended it to numerous people.

The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

Author: Michael Scott Moore

The title says it all. Michael Scott Moore was captured by Somali pirates for almost a thousand days. This book is a harrowing tale of how Michael was able to keep his sanity and somehow live to tell his story. What is astonishing is the uber-calmness that he exudes on every page of this narrative. Here's a quote that sums up his stoicsism -- "The appropriate answer to the question Why me? is the other question Why not me?”

When I read books like this, it clarifies my mind and makes all my problems seem trivial in comparison. Thanks to the ordeal he has been through, Michael was able to step back and reflect on many aspects of his life.  Earlier in his career, he had written a column against female circumcision and received much kudos for it in California. But he acknowledges that it probably made no difference in the parts of the world where it is practiced. As a prisoner in Somalia he had more relevant conversations of the practice, but had no ability to act on it. It made him reflect that to have a positive impact on this world, you need the right idea, at the right time, in the right place and also need to be in a position to be taken seriously. 

The book has an eclectic mix of characters that includes, Somali pirates and their Chinese, Filipino and American captive. There's not much by way of conversation, but Michael tells a gripping tale like no other.

The obesity code - Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

Author: Dr. Jason Fung

Every few years there’s a new theory on losing weight. It’s now a question of how long will this theory last. In that spirit, let’s dive into “The obesity code” which purports to have found the answer to the question that has puzzled humans for last few centuries. Why do some people gain weight, while others can eat bags and bags of unhealthy snacks all day, and still avoid the obesity trap. 

Dr. Jason Fung very eloquently describe the mechanics of digestion. First he sets out to explain the outsize role that hormones play in our digestive process. In particular he is focused on the hormone “insulin”. At a fundamental level, the food we eat is broken down into chains of sugars (carbohydrates), amino acids (from proteins) and fatty acids (from fat). The cells in our body use the blood sugar(glucose) for energy. The crux of the book is how the hormone, insulin has a key role to play in allowing sugar to enter the cell. 

Given their chemical composition, carbohydrates raise blood sugar more than other foods. This rise stimulates the release of insulin that starts the cells machinery of ingesting the sugars. Proteins and Fats don’t end up triggering the release of insulin and hence avoid opening the floodgates. There could be other side-effects of overindulging in protein and fat, so don’t go crazy.

Finally we get to the prescriptive part. First Dr. Fung outlines what we should eat (or not). 

- reduce intake of refined grains and sugars

- eat moderate amount of proteins

- increase consumption of natural fats

- maximize fiber

Equally important from an insulin perspective is “When to Eat”. He recommends balancing insulin dominant periods with insulin deficient periods. In other words, balance your feeding and fasting. Intermittent fasting is a great way to achieve this.

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

Author: Francisco Cantú

Border Security was dominating the news media during the time of Trump’s presidency.  I don’t recall how I came across this book, but am really glad that I read it. The book detail’s Cantú’s exeperiences as a Border Patrol Agent and you will get a first hand view of how things are quite different than what you read about in the mass media. He delves into the complexities of immigration, capturing the humanity of those seeking a better life while acknowledging the challenges faced by the Border Security agents. 

The memoir is deeply introspective and provides a view into Cantú’s internal struggles and moral dilemmas as he grapples with the ethical implications of his work. It touches on themes of identity, justice and the consequences of policies on both sides of the border. Read this and you will a much better understanding of both the migrants crossing the border and the people whose job it is to secure it.

Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams

Author: Matthew Walker

I have a confession to make. As I was reading this book, I could not stop talking about it to my family and friends. I urged every single one of them to read it and extolled the virtues of 7 and half hours of sleep a day. I suddenly became conscious and protective of my sleep time and even turned down a few invitations for late night parties that would make me sacrifice my sleep. 

I read a lot of self-improvement books, but have never before felt this convinced by an author. I quickly glanced at the reviews on Amazon and noted that I was not alone. Almost every one of the reviews started out with an over-the-top recommendation for the book. One reviewer nicely summed up this sentiment by saying “This book will drive you to become an evangelist for sleep". 

A deep and refreshing sleep is a critical component of our brain's daily maintenance cycle. Just like you can drive a car without an oil change every six months, you can get by with less sleep. However, it will take its toll and you will be more susceptible to scores of ailments that afflict all human beings. Dr. Walker has found that a lack of sleep increases your likelihood of contracting chronic diseases like Hypertension, Diabetes, Cancer, Heart Attacks, Alzheimers, Obesity and Depression. He writes about the different phases of sleep like NREM, deep NREM and REM, and breaks down the specific benefits of each phase. The NREM portion of our sleep is the restorative phase for not only our brain, but our entire body. During the NREM phase our brain releases all kinds of chemicals and hormones that rejuvenate the many different organs in our body. In this phase, it also generates growth hormones that are critical to the buildup of muscles. So it should come as no surprise that a good night’s sleep is critical to the performance of all top athletes. 

In contrast, REM sleep is critical to the recharging of our brain. This is the period when we dream. Contrary to our physical body, it is the time when the brain is highly active, with rapid eye movements. All the rest of the body’s musculature is cut off from the brain during this period, so you are unable to physically act out your dreams. During our REM sleep the brain processes everything that you have learned during the day. It filters out the unnecessary stuff and files away the pieces that you may need for the future. Hence it is critical for our learning and retaining knowledge. Dr. Walker highlights several studies that underscore the importance of sleep for memory retention and is very clear in his recommendation that you are better off taking the time to have a good night’s rest before an exam, than spending a few more hours cramming. Our brain also prunes and maintains synaptic connections during REM sleep and there is an argument to be made that many creative ideas originate in our brain during our dreams. Another benefit of REM sleep is that it helps us forget some of the distressing emotional fallout from our traumatic encounters, which is necessary for us to heal and move forward.

Dr. Walker notes that every animal species (even pre-vertebrates) sleeps, despite the fact that most of them have to live with the constant threat of predators.  The fact that sleep has survived eons of evolution indicate that it must be a biological necessity. Read this book, but don’t do it at the cost of getting a full complement of required sleep.

A Horse Walks into a Bar

Author: David Grossman

David Grossman is an acclaimed Israeli author and novelist. This book won the International Booker Prize in 2017, and is an intimate portrayal of one man’s unraveling, framed within the confines of a stand-up comedy performance. 

The narrative unfolds during a single night in a small Israeli town's comedy club, where Dovaleh Greenstein, a seasoned stand-up comedian, takes the stage. What begins as an ordinary night of laughter quickly transforms into a raw and emotionally charged journey as Dovaleh peels back the layers of his own troubled past, exposing the wounds that have shaped his life.

Dovaleh Greenstein is a complex and deeply flawed protagonist whose story unfolds with every punchline. As he bares his soul, the audience becomes entangled in the intricate dance between laughter and sorrow, witnessing the vulnerability beneath the facade of comedy.

The book is well written and is entertaining. I wanted to love this book, but really couldn’t.

Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life

Author: Francesca Gino

Franciscoa Gina is a Harvard Business School Professor who believes that rebels have got a bad rap in business. In this book she combs through her vast experience working with many successful organizations to give us examples where “rebel talent” has been the reason for their success. She cites examples from Pixar Studios, the successful Chef Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana, Eric Shmidt, etc. She claims that “Rebels understand that conflict can lead to growth and that disagreement is a feature, rather than a flaw”. She goes on to say that contrary to general wisdom, it’s better to improve on our strengths than focus on our weaknesses. This is another case of where it pays to be authentic. Trying to improve areas of weakness is likely to end up in a territory of inauthenticity which will reduce your  effectiveness. 

It’s an interesting take and definitely something to consider as you are building out your team.

The Tyranny of Metrics

Author: Jerry Z. Muller

We live in an age that puts metrics up on a pedestal. Every business is ultimately measured by its financial metrics. Internally, the business is run by a host of metrics that are expected to be an early gauge on the business performance. Recent advances in computing have provided us with a treasure trove of Big Data that from which we mine even more metrics than we can imagine.  Where does all of this lead? According to the author, Jerry Muller, “we have gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself”. He argues that this has resulted in a tyranny of metrics that is misguided and leading many of us down the wrong path.

There are numerous quotes in the book on both sides of the metrics aisle. It starts with a statement that is apparently mis-attributed to Lord Kelvin: “If you can’t measure it, you cannot improve it”. 

He tackles several disciples ranging from Education to Policing. He explains how Pay-for-performance is notorious for encouraging all kinds of metrics manipulation. In Vietnam, the enemy body count was a key metric that the US used to determine success in the war. These counts were often exaggerated and sadly many US soldiers lost their lives searching for bodies.

Here are some nuggets from the book that are very relevant to our role as managers. 

A system of measured performance will work to the extent that people being measured believe in its worth.

Some things to keep in mind

• misalignment of metrics will most certainly be counter productive.
• metrics to evaluate performance and promotion are some of the most dangerous
• metrics are more effective if they are developed by someone close to the activity being measured
• more measurement means more costs in measuring and evaluating data, resulting in lost productivity
• metrics work best when those measured buy into its purpose and validity.

I found the book to be a good cautionary tale to all of us who swear by the metrics we keep track of.

Principles: Life and Work

Author: Ray Dalio

I struggled with this book. But, before I tell you about that let me talk about the book. This is Ray Dalio pontificating about his philosophy in life. He postulates the existence of universal laws governing reality and how to deal with it. He is on a quest to educate us about them.

It’s a noble goal, but unfortunately the book reads more like an advertisement for Ray Dalio and all the material he has published over the years. I liked the first part of the book where he talks about how he started his business and some of the personal challenges he has gone through. However, he tries very hard to come across as being very profound and includes some non-sensical equations like the following:

Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life.

He then qualifies this by saying that the definition of successful life is up to you. He goes so far as to say that your notion of a successful life could be a “couch potato”. I would have loved to see him explain what the variables of “Dreams” and “Determination” stood for in the above equation if  "Successful Life = Couch Potato".

As you can tell, I was not impressed with this book. It also was a drag to read.  Ray Dalio should stick to the investment business and leave writing books to professionals.

Brotopia: Breaking up the Boy's Club of Silicon Valley

Author: Emily Chang 

Emily Chang has a lot of experience interviewing the titans of the Tech Industry. As the Executive Producer of Bloomberg Technology, Ms. Chang had unfettered access to many of the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley. She packages up all of her rich experiences with this colorful cast of characters into a digestible format that is relatively easy to consume. The topics however are serious ones and are definitely of interest to anyone who works in Silicon Valley. 

The recent decline of women in Computer Science has a lot of people scrambling to find out why. Every Tech company that I have come across is eager to improve its gender diversity and have many programs to turn this around. However, to date, the improvements are marginal at best. Emily dives into this from the very beginning. She goes back in time and questions the initial premise that Computer Science is for antisocial, nerds. This self-fulfilling stereotype attracted a subset of boys and men that ultimately were a turn-off for most women. Emily challenges this notion and it definitely got me thinking about the veracity of the stereotype. 

In later chapters she examines some of the excesses in Silicon Valley and misbehaviors of powerful men. This book was written before the #metoo movement, but its not hard to imagine some of the recent exposes fitting right in this book. If you have read the excerpt in the Vanity fair then you already know all about the sex parties in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurial women were damned if they participated or didn’t. It is clear, that Emily had an up close view into many of these sordid and sad stories of abuse by men in power in high flying tech companies. Hopefully, with the current #metoo movement, most of these are a thing of the past.

Ms. Chang highlights how history is written to glorify the male entrepreneurs and tends to downplay the contribution of women. She gives the example of Susan Wojcicki and how she had an oversized influence in the early days of Google and is responsible for the monetization of their Search platform. However not many people talk about this or even know about it. 

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to do something to improve the gender diversity in the Tech Industry. 

Who We Are and How We Got Here

Author: David Reich

My first entry into the world of genetics was from the book “Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes”, by Svaante Paabo. In it, he chronicles the challenge and excitement of deciphering the first Neanderthal genome, and it got me totally hooked on the science of using DNA to theorize how our early ancestors roamed the world and laid down their roots all over the globe.

David Reich has spent his life analyzing the DNA of both past and present humans, looking for genome-wide patterns of mutations to gain a better understanding of how humans migrated and mixed among populations.

Humans probably lived as hunter-gatherers for over 35,000 years in Europe. Around 8500 years back, Anatolian farmers brought farming to Europe and around 5000 years ago the Yamnaya culture moved into Europe from the Caspian Steppe. The Yamnaya people are credited with the spread — if not the invention — of the wheel, using it for transportation in wagons to making pots with the pottery wheel. By hitching a horse to the wagon, they could carry water and supplies to far off lands and inhabit places that may have been inaccessible until then. As a result of this, the Yamnaya culture most likely enjoyed a much higher level of productivity than their peer cultures at the time.

The Indus Valley Civilization flourished in the border of what is currently India and Pakistan, around 5000 years ago. One of the great unsolved mysteries is what caused their relatively quick decline. Could they have been vanquished by warriors from the Yamnaya culture riding horses and chariots? The archaeological evidence from the Indus Valley does not show much by way of domesticated horses.

David spends a good chunk of the book dissecting the Indian population. At a broad level he breaks us down into Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and Ancestral South Indian (ASI) which roughly corresponds to the people of North Indian culture and South Indian culture respectively. By studying the genetic makeup of different groups of Indians he makes some interesting observations.

1. Indian people have very diverse physical characteristics that is most likely the result of a lot of mixing of gene pools
2. His studies conclude that the West-European mixture in India can range from a high of 80% to a low of 20%, and almost every group has some common genealogy with Western Europe.
3. Groups speaking Indo-European languages have more ANI history than others
4. Higher social status is correlated with ANI ancestry
5. Most of the ANI genetic input came from Europe to India from males. The female ancestry is mostly restricted to India and most likely came from ASI.
6. There was lot of mixing between ANI and ASI in the periods between four thousand and two thousand years ago.
7. This implies that the population structure of India four thousand plus years ago was dramatically different than what it is today
8. Indians are notorious for endogamy, which is the practice of marrying people whose culture is very similar to yours. This has ended up creating population bottlenecks that are a great vehicle for studying genetics and ancestry

One of the conclusions is that India is composed of a large number of small populations. The book is truly insightful and is a fascinating read.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist

Author: Radley Balko & Tucker Carrington

We all pride ourselves with the American Judicial system and believe that every person has the right to a free and fair trial. I knew that there were all kinds of racial prejudice and bias in the past, but had no idea that this was still quite rampant in some states in the 21st century. Author Radley Balko, an investigative journalist for the Washington Post and Tucker Carrington, a criminal defense lawyer delve into the archaic coroner system in Mississippi and the ensuing travesty in its court system. They expose how the deep rooted racial biases coupled with junk science and overzealous prosecutors have put innocent people behind bars for decades on end. 

The book is an excellent work of investigative reporting and is highly readable. You will be shocked at how injustices like this have been swept under the carpet for so long. Hopefully this book will raise awareness of the issue and force judicial reform in states like Mississippi. 

The Heart is a Shifting Sea

Author: Elizabeth Flock

The book charts the course of three mumbai couples' love and marriage. The three couples are from different ethnicities and religions and cover North and South India as well as Hindu and Muslim couples. Veer and Maya are both originally from Rajasthan, while Ashok and Parvati and Tamil Brahmins often referred to as Tam Brahms. Shehzad and Sabeena are the muslim couple and you will learn from the book how limited their intersection is with people of another faith.

Ms. Flock starts their stories with their first love interest and I am amazed at how much each of these couples have shared with her. Some of them, like the muslim couple are fairly conservative, yet Ms. Flock is privy to some of their darkest secrets. There are many intimate details described in the book that I didn’t think that Indians were that comfortable sharing that too with a journalist. 

Each of these stories is a novella in its own right and there is little connecting the three of them together. Ms. Flock alternates between the stories in an effort to hold you in suspense just as the plot thickens. It was a fascinating read for me, especially as it provided a reminder of the contemporaneous news events in India of the last two decades. I really identified with the characters and found it to be quite a page-turner.  I am not sure how much it will appeal to an audience that is not familiar with India.

How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region

Author: Joe Studwell

In this book, Studwell analyzes the economic models of countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, and provides a comprehensive examination of the factors that contributed to their rapid and sustained growth.

The central argument of the book revolves around the idea that successful Asian economies share common traits, primarily focusing on three key pillars: 

• land reform,
• export-oriented industrialization
• financial systems that support agriculture and industry.

The book delves into historical context, political decisions, and policy implementations to showcase how these nations effectively utilized these strategies to transform their economies. Here are some specific examples:

1. Land Reform in Japan:

Studwell discusses Japan's post-war land reform as a crucial factor in its economic transformation. By redistributing land from large landowners to tenant farmers, Japan created a more equitable distribution of wealth and stimulated agricultural productivity.

    

2. Export-Oriented Industrialization in South Korea:

South Korea's economic success is attributed to its export-oriented industrialization strategy. The government actively supported and directed key industries, such as steel and petrochemicals, fostering a competitive advantage in global markets.

    

3. Agricultural Development in Taiwan:

Taiwan's land reform and agricultural policies were instrumental in the country's development. By providing secure land tenure to farmers and encouraging small-scale, high-value agriculture, Taiwan achieved significant improvements in productivity.

    

4. State-Led Industrialization in China:

China's state-led industrialization policies, particularly under Deng Xiaoping's reforms, played a crucial role in opening up the economy to foreign investment, fostering export-oriented growth, and building Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

    

While the book doesn’t have the appeal of personal anecdotes, it provides a wealth of historical policy-driven narratives to explain the economic trajectories in the successful Asian nations.

Hit Refresh

Authors: Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw and Jill Tracie Nichols

It took me a long while to gather up the motivation to read this book. I am cynical of books written by CEOs especially if they are written with the help of ghostwriters. I assume that they are doing this to get one more notch on their list of accomplishments and not because they have really have something to say. However, once I started reading the book, I developed an appreciation for Satya and his leadership style.

There are a few details on his early years and his love for cricket shines through. Also the challenges that he has had to deal with caring for a son with cerebral palsy clearly have made him a much more empathetic leader.

I loved the three leadership principles that he espouses in the book.

1. Bring clarity to those you work with

2. Leaders generate energy within their teams and across the company

3. Find a way to make things happen and deliver success

He doesn’t mince words when he talks about his expectations for Microsoft’s leaders, “Your job is to find rose petals in the field of shit”.

I noticed that there was heavy use of the word “democratize” and I see that it has crept into the regular vernacular these days.  For instance Satya says, “our focus at Microsoft is to democratize technology” which is probably his way of saying that Microsoft’s goal is to make technology readily available for the masses.

Satya's father was an economist and I could tell that Satya has an outsize interest in the implications of technology on the economy. He explores some data from the Cross-country Historical Adoption of Technology (I prefer the acronym CHAT) study which found that on average countries tend to adopt a new technology around 45 years after its invention. Not surprisingly, the ones that are quicker at adopting new technologies are the richer countries.

Overall, I couldn’t tell what audience he hoped to reach with this book. It was easy to read and made some interesting points.

The Perfect Nanny

Author: Leila Slimani

Whenever I find a foreign book that has won literary accolades and is translated into English, I add it to my reading list. My logic is fairly simple. For someone to take the time to translate the book, it must reasonably good. This book does not break my simple rule. 

Myriam decides to go back to work as a lawyer after having children and is looking for a nanny to look after them. She finds the perfect nanny — hence the title — who is wonderful, hard working, quiet, polite, fastidiously clean, amazing cook. In a nutshell she is too good to be true. Disaster strikes and their lives are turned upside down. You will find it impossible to stop turning the pages and racing to see how this book is going to end.

In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimers

Author: Joseph Jebelli

I have watched the toll that Alzheimers took on my Dad and can personally relate to a lot that is in this book. It is for this very reason that as soon as I read the review in the Wall Street Journal, I knew I had to check out this book. The author Joseph Jebelli watched his beloved grandfather suffer with alzheimers and  deteriorate right in front of his eyes. This motivated him to become a neuroscientist and study Alzheimer's. In this well written book he lays out for us all the things that he has learned about including the history of the disease, the common symptoms and the recent discoveries and theories about what causes alzheimer’s. 

It seems like alzheimers is much more prevalent now and I am wondering if it is simply because people are living longer. I knew that very little was known about this disease when my Dad suffered through it and I was pleasantly surprised to read about the progress that has been made over the last several years on this very important malaise that is likely to afflict many of us. 

Mr. Jebelli starts out by explaining how one of the well established pieces of evidence pointing to alzheimers is the accumulation of plaque around the brain. He explains how beta amyloid peptides ultimately result in the formation of this plaque. It is still not clear how these accumulate and there are various theories on whether it is the root cause or a side effect of alzheimer’s. The proponents of the theory that plaque is the root cause of Alzheimers are called BAPtists, where BAP=beta amyloid plaque.  Apolipoprotein E (APoE) is a class of proteins involved in the metabolism of fats in the body.  It is the principal cholesterol carrier in the brain and is essential for healthy metabolism of cholesterol and triglycerides. They bind lipids to form water soluble compounds that can be transported through our circulatory system. In humans APoE come in three common isoforms, APoE2, APoE3 and APoE4. The APoE4 gene is associated with an increased risk for Alzheimers, however there are several environmental factors that also play a part in activating this condition.

A more recent theory for Alzheimer’s is associated with the microtubule-associated protein tau. According to this theory, the accumulation of these tau proteins result in hyperpohsphorylated tangles that undergo a degeneration resulting in lesions.  The proponents of this theory are called Tau-ists. There is an active debate on whether the Tau-ists or the BAPtist theory is the root cause or one is a result of the other. More recently there are studies that are trying to find a common ground between the two camps. 

Mr. Jebelli highlights the many near successes that researchers have had in this field, but then reminds us that some things that work well in mice, don’t work quite as well in human beings. The chapter about taking a piece of someone’s skin, and using it to grow neurons in a Petri dish is surreal. He also has the story about Shinya Yamanaka’s persistence that made this technique possible. 

One interesting genetic twist that has recently been discovered is the inverse correlation of alzheimers and cancer genes. Simply put, people who get Alzheimer’s have a lower risk of getting cancer and people with cancer are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. 

I recently read a book on the importance of sleep and how we are getting less and less of it these days with all the distractions from binge watching to checking Facebook on your cell-phone. There has been a strong correlation between lack of sleep and alzheimer’s and it is conceivable that people are getting less sleep in modern times. Finally, Dr. Jebelli writes that  there is a strong connection between our olfactory capabilities and Alzheimer’s. I do recall that my Dad lost his sense of smell way before he exhibited the first symptoms of Alzheimers. At the time, we thought it was because of the nasal drops that he used to routinely use. Now, I think differently.

I am sure many of the findings in this book will have to be revised in the next decade. But then again, your brain may not quite be the same in the next decade. So read this quickly, while you still can!