Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food

Author: Chris Van Tulleken

I was expecting a scientific explanation about Ultra-Processed Food (UPF) and some guidance on what foods to avoid. After reading the book, I am more confused than before. 

Let’s start with the definition. Apparently, UPF has a long scientific definition that the author feels is not worth writing down in the book. Instead he says this: “If it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t usually find in a standard home kitchen, it’s UPF”.  I have no idea what a “standard home kitchen” is.  In our kitchen, we have all kinds of ingredients that we use to cook our meals with and it is quite conceivable that some of these ingredients are ultra-processed. So I guess my kitchen deviates from the “standard” that the author is referring to. Needless to say, this doesn’t help me get any closer to the definition of UPF.

I don’t let this minor technicality bother me too much and continue reading the book only to find that the author expands the definition to be extremely broad. In general, anything that is marketed and sold by profit making companies, could be classified as UPF. A case in point being the extension of the UPF label to bottled water, as it is now aggressively marketed and is messing with your mind. Notwithstanding this extreme case, there are tons of examples in the book of the deleterious effects that many innocent sounding food additives like coloring, xantham gum, lecithin, inulin, emulsifiers, modified starches. It turns out that many of these have the potential of messing with your natural regulatory mechanisms of food consumption and consequently can cause you to eat more and put on weight.

The book is not particularly well organized and makes for a difficult read.

The Good Virus

Author: Tom Ireland

This book goes into the wonderful world of bacteriophages. Phages are little viruses that attack and destroy bacteria in the process of replicating themselves. In a world, where our antibiotics are soon going to be ineffective bacteriophages may turn out to be one of our most important life saving medicines.

It turns out that while people discovered the existence of phages more than a hundred years ago, this field has not got its due from the scientific and medical community. This book goes into the the history of the early Pioneers, who put phages on the map, and then the trio of scientists, Delbrook, Luria, and Hershey, who really did phenomenal work in this area. They essentially invented an entirely new field of biology that was heavily dependent on mathematics to tease out the workings of phages.

Note that they started out on this endeavor before the discovery of electron microscopes before Watson, and Crick had their famous double-helix DNA model. In fact, Delbrook was driven with a mission to uncover the secret of life and phages were just a side product in his view. Unfortunately before he was able to discover the genetic code, Watson who was a student of Luria actually discovered the double helix structure of DNA, and the rest is history. However, the work that this trio has done has gone off to inspire at least six Nobel prizes and help make many other breakthroughs in the life sciences . 

Here’s some very interesting observations from the book

• There are more phages in a typical liter of sea water then there are humans on the planet. And there are 10^21 litres of water on the planet.
• CRISPR —> Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Discovered by Mojica while studying viruses in the hypersaline waters off the coast of Alicante, Spain.  It turns out that many bacteria have this Cas-9  (CRISPR associated) protein that can hunt for phage DNA sequences that match and cut them in half.
• The yoghurt industry pioneered the discovery and study of phages and CRISPR as they were lookin to protect the integrity of the bacterial strains that were used in the yoghurt culture.
• There’s an open source phage library called the “[Citizen Phage Library](https://www.citizenphage.com/)” project. To become a Phage Hunter, all you need to do is use their sample kit to mail a sample of water from your environment. You register the location and photos through their web-site and they’ll process it to identify new phages
• The OG of Phages is a French-Canadian scientist named Felix d’Herelle and there is a startup in the Bay Area named Felix that is developing a Digital Phage Platform.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

Author: Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis has a rare gift for taking something complex in the world and writing a great book about it. In this particular case, he also happened to be in the right place at the right time, capturing the rise of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and friends, just before they got all consumed up in managing their downfall. 

The story starts with SBF attending an exclusive high school — Crystal Springs — in the San Francisco Bay area and being a gifted awkward student that by itself, would have been commonplace in Silicon Valley. He then went to MIT and graduated with a degree in Physics and a minor in Mathematics. His formative years in the workplace were at Jane Street Capital, one of the top global trading firms credited with trading trillions of dollars of security annually. The first few chapters in the book describe the quirky hiring practices and workplace culture at Jane Street that attracted the brightest young graduates from the top schools in the US. They paid them handsomely as well.  One of their main tenets was evaluating the Expected Value (EV) of trades and decision making was often reduced to maximizing the EV around trades, positions, etc. 

From Michael’s description it is clear that SBF and friends (Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, Ramnik Arora, …) tried to use EV as a general framework for all sorts of decisions that they were faced with.  It’s amusing to read how random probabilities were thrown around and used to compute rough Expected Values to conveniently arrive at decisions.

The whole story can be broken down into a few key points

1. Sam was heavily influenced by the Effective Altruism Movement and had William MacAskill retained as an unpaid advisor. 

2. He got tired of working at Jane Street Capital and figured out that he could make a lot of money in the arbitrage of  of cryptocurrency prices in different countries. He started a company in Berkeley California, where he recruited more than a dozen young effective altruitsts, and named it Alameda Research. 

3. They were making money hand over fist and SBF started getting noticed at crypto conferences in Macau and then Hong Kong. 

4. Being one of the largest traders in the crypto sphere, he realized that the existing crypto exchanges were really crappy in terms of their user interface, glitchy and had little to no customer support. Along with Gary Wang, he decided to build a much better crypto derivative exchange and FTX was born in 2019. 

5. Some of the key innovations with FTX was a system where margin accounts were liquidated within 30 seconds of their going negative. This greatly limited FTX from holding the bag in case one side of a trade went insolvent and protected the other customers from being hurt in the process. 

6. Alameda Research was now a sister company that also had a trading account of FTX. It typically was the market maker on the exchange and was the last resort for liquidity, buying up the contents of insolvent margin accounts whenever needed. 

7. To ensure that Alameda was always around, FTX had a special “do_not_liquidate” flag for the Alameda Research account that allowed it to go negative in terms of its balance on FTX. This little loop-hole, turned into a $65B line of credit that ended up sucking out customer money from FTX.

8. Alameda Research siphoned out ~$10B worth of customer funds and that is what ulitmately triggered the run on FTX and its ensuing bankruptcy.

9. One of the big mysteries that is left open in the book is where did this money go? Other than fraud, there doesn’t seem to be any glaring trading loss from Alameda Research, etc. that can explain this vast hole in the bank account.

In addition to telling the above story there’s a lot of detail of the many characters at the top of FTX and Alameda Research. The strange romance between SBF and Caroline Ellison is also explained with little fanfare by Michael. It is made clear to the reader that Sam’s quirky behavior is consistently plastered over all aspects of his life. 

While Sam was clearly a poor manager — he abhorred one-on-ones and simply didn’t like talking to people, unless he was playing a video game on the side — it turns out that he wrote a bunch of memos to his team that demonstrated that he not only thought through managerial things, but also was able to articulate it well. Typically he did this by writing a memo with a few succinct bullet points. Here’s an example of a memo he wrote on elevated titles in the workplace:

1. Having a title makes people feel less willing to take advice from those without titles.

2. Having a title makes people less likely to put in the effort to learn how to do well at the base-level jobs of people they're managing. They end up trying to manage people whose jobs they couldn't do, and that always goes poorly.

3. Having titles can create significant conflicts between your ego and the company.

4. Having titles can piss off colleagues.

The book also has some pithy observation credited to Sam like “People like you more if you agree with them”. He apparently embraced this aphorism personally and used to respond with a “Yup”  as a standard response to most attempts at conversation.

It’s too bad that Michael  published his book before the US court proceedings. I am sure, he would have got a lot more insight into FTX/Alameda and would have a more detailed explanation of the many acounting mis-deeds that brought the company down. 

One glaring absence from the book is Gary Wang. He is the clear architect and developer of the FTX software, but Michael could not get even a couple of words out of Gary.  If you want the technical details of how Alameda Research was able to draw down billions of dollars from FTX, check out this Verge article  which describes Gary Wang’s testimony in court. For a more in-depth review of the fradulent code, Molly White includes the damning evidence from the code.

All quibbles aside, this is a great piece of writing that is quite entertaining and sheds light on the characters that made and broke FTX and Alameda Research. It makes for a quick and fascinating read.

From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine

Author: Ben Stanger

At the surface, the title of this book seems obvious. From our elementary school days we all know that our complex bodies all came from one cell. Heck, we even know how that one cell came about and the contributions that your biological father and mother made to the DNA of that one cell.

But, that is not really what this book is about. We all know that one cell, the embryo, replicated a gazillion times to form us. However, there is one question that I have always had. How are these replications orchestrated so that some of them give rise to our heart, others to our lungs and so on and so forth. 

The book answers that very basic question and gives us a glimpse into what scientists are currently discovering about the specialization of cell-division into the different parts of our body. It delves into the mysteries of developmental biology, tracing the groundbreaking research that has uncovered how cells communicate, differentiate and orchestrate the intricate process of building the different parts of am organism. As is typically the practice for all new discoveries, there is a healthy dose of how this can be used in regenerative medicine and cancer treatment.

I was fascinated and educated at the same time!

The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth

Author: Chris Zook & James Allen

One of the nice things about US companies is that they engage with a lot of management consultants who end up having access to all kinds of financial information that they can mine for nuggets of wisdom. Chris Zook and James Allen are two longtime partners in Bain and Company who have taken their learnings from companies all across the globe and distilled it into this little book on “Founders Mentality”. 

Not surprisingly, most companies have a tendency to grow large and inefficient. The very thing that is designed to help them scale, ends up building massive organizational silos where doing anything that ultimately provides value to the customer becomes bureaucratic and cumbersome. In fact they report how a survey to 325 executives of large companies claimed their internal groups grew four times as often as external ones. 

They go on to state what most people in large companies know all too well. “The curse of the matrix even causes many companies to lose access to their own resources. Why? Resources in matrix organizations get trapped in departmental, silos, often defended by ballooning, sentient stuff that I’ve become the ultimate expert at the internal game. This slows down decision making and makes it impossible to concentrate resources. Big companies that have lost the founders. Mentality tend to spread resources around evenly, an understandable instinct, but one that leads inevitably to mediocrity.“

The book really delves into what it takes to have a “founders mentality” and how to apply it to large companies. The authors are very fond of the word insurgent. They goes so far as to define a term called scale insurgency, and guess what they define it as “companies that have stayed true to their insurgency for a long time…“ two sentences later, they confess  “all of the advice in this book is designed to help companies, achieve, scale, insurgency“

If you need reassurance that you are not alone in a bureaucratic large company, then this is the book for you. There are some good quotes that I noted down. Here are a couple”

• “more companies die from indigestion than starvation” — David Packard
• Create a council of franchise players – employees that have a disproportionate impact on the performance of the company.

Read this book to evaluate where your company stands in terms of operating with the insurgency of a fouder.

Time Shelter: A Novel

Author: Georgi Gospodinov

I try to read all Booker Prize winners and am happy to report that this book made it to the top in 2023. This is an unusual book with a very unique and interesting premise. Gospodinov conjures up a world in which an enterprising sould is creating a refuge for people who are losing their memories. Through this setting he comes up with a lot of interesting observations that are thought provoking and amusing. I list some of them here as a sample.

While describing a conversation between two Bulgarians he says

for a Bulgarian, complaining is like talking about the weather in England, you can never go wrong

In comparing major European cities and their appeal to the different age groups he says

Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam for youth… Then comes the maturity of Vienna, or Brussels.… OK, for those who still do not wish to grow old – Rome, Barcelona, Madrid… To the late youth, I would also add New York, yes, I count it as a European city that ended up across the ocean due to a certain chain of events.

He borrows from Doors, Beatles, and even modifies the famous Tolstoyan quote as follows. 

Happens stories are all alike, every unhappened story isn’t happened in its own way.

There are tons of pithy observations like 

Anthropocene, the first era named for man, will likely turn out to be the last for him.

Another wonderful observation. 

Happiness doesn’t make it into the history textbooks (there only battles, pogroms, betrayals and bloody murders of some archduke make the cut).

Gospodinov acknowledges that we don’t live our lives in isolation. Our experiences are the result of our interactions with the many different people we share our lives with. Some are fleeting moments that we barely pay attention to, while others are true experiences that we cherish or hate,  or feel some thing in between. In summary, he says

My whole life is sewn together from other peoples lives

Finally, he drops this on us

In the end, writing arises when man realizes that memory is not enough

It’s a brilliant book that makes you appreciate and reflect on a lot of things happening around you that you might just not have had the insight to stop and look at in they way the author has done for us.

India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today

Author: Ashoka Mody

I love History and Economics and this book has both. It dissects the economic performance of every political regime in post Independence India. No leader is spared the critical performance review except for maybe PV Narasimha Rao and  Lal Bahadur Shastri  for whom it is clear that the author has a soft spot. Mody makes it a point to note that he was 10 years old and wept when he heard that Lal Bahadur Shastri had died. 

The book opens with India’s Independence and Nehru becoming the first Prime Minister. Right from the start he notes that Gandhiji stated that  “Jawahar is a thinker, said that (Patel) a doer.” From there he points out the many flaws of Nehru’s Five Year plans and focus on large industry. The author’s contention throughout the book is that these large industries don’t employ enough people and what India really has is an abundance of underemployed masses.  Furthermore, he points out that Nehru really revered scientists and loved to attend functions that celebrated scientific accomplishments. He ignored the uneducated masses and didn’t have the desire or ability to drive programs to educate the bulk of India’s population. 

On Nehru’s death, the Congress Party nominated Lal Bahadur Shastri as the Prime Minister, who appointed Indira Gandhi as the Minister for Information and Broadcasting. During his two year tenure, Pakistan attacked India to lay claim to half the territory in Kutch. Shastri was a self-proclaimed secularist and despite the opportunity present, did not mix religion with politics. He died while visiting Russia and there is speculation to the cause of his death, but there is no concrete evidence of foul play. He is known for his honesty and humility and it is India’s loss that he was PM for only 2 years. 

After Shastri’s death, Indira Gandhi was able to out-maneuver  Morarji Desai to win the Congress Party nomination for the PM role. She presided over a war with China and a war with Pakistan that resulted in granting independence to Bangladesh.  In the mid 70’s there were lots of protests and separatist movements all across India and Indira declared a State of Emergency that curtailed basic civil liberties and censored the Press. From an economic standpoint, Mody writes that she was a lightweight who simply continued in the the ineffective path of Five Year plans that Nehru had started.  One of her major shortfalls was coddling her son Sanjay Gandhi, supporting his ill-advised ventures and bailing him out of his numerous follies. One of the most significant examples is Sanjay’s attempt at creating an indigenous car company, Maruti. Her government made numerous handouts to Maruti and the entire government became infested with corruption. I don’t know if this was the cause, but co-incidentally there was widespread corruption all over India during this time. The trauma of Emergency resulted in the Congress Party losing the election, but the resulting coalition of the Janata party was too fragile to last more than a couple of years. 

Indira got re-elected to office in 1980, but shortly thereafter Sanjay Gandhi died while trying some aerobatic stunts over Delhi.  This had a huge effect on Indira and she persuaded Rajiv Gandhi, her other son, to enter the political arena. Around this time, the Sikh Separatist movement headed by Bhindranwale were demanding a separate state for the Sikhs and had started stockpiling weapons at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Indira authorized operation Blue Star and the Indian Army entered the Golden Temple and removed Bhindranwale, his supporters and their weapons. Some holy parts of the temple were damaged and many innocent worshippers lost their lives. Indira became a target for Sikh terrorists and she was assassinated by one of her Sikh body guards on October 31, 1984. 

Rajiv Gandhi succeeded Indira as Prime Minister and there as general violence and backlash at the Sikh community. He had some heavyweights in his cabinet including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, PV Narasimha Rao was in charge of defence, VP Singh was a Finance Minister first and then given the Ministry of Defence. However, he frequently shuffled the Cabinet ministers, and the press labeled it as the “Wheel of Confusion”.  The Sri Lankan Civil War was gathering steam with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demanding an independent Tamil State. Rajiv signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in 1987, installing the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and requiring the LTTE to give up their arms to the IPKF.  Rajiv was assassinated by a suicide bomber from the LTTE while campaigning in Sriperumbudur, a village near Chennai.

P.V. Narasimha Rao is one of the few people who gets a virus. Maybe it’s because he appointed Manmohan Singh, an oxford trained economist to be his Finance Minister. Manmohan Singh devalued the rupee and made policy changes that significantly reduced the budget deficit. This was the first of many steps in the path of economic liberalization that laid the seeds for manufacturing growth. During this time, the stock market boomed, but it was not all because of prudent economic policy. Harshad Mehra  was a big part of the boom in the stock market and he turned out to be fraudster.

Finally, we get to all the mistakes of the Modi government. In keeping with the economic theme, the author is mainly concerned with the impacts of Modi’s economic policies like the demonetization of large Rupee notes, the Farmers Bill and several others on which the dust has barely settled.  He talks about the contrast of agriculture in India, versus the rest of the world. In the second half of the 20th century, and countries like South Korea and China, the number of workers employed in agriculture, drastically reduced, and the number of workers in industry commensurately increased however, in India the number of people employed by agriculture, state flat or even went up in the 1990s. This turned out to be really harsh, and because the plot size is decreased, the weather conditions worsened, their output was below subsistence level and many of the farmers committed suicide.

Nefertiti: A Novel

Author: Michelle Moran

In preparing for a trip to Egypt, I started reading about famous Egyptian rulers. Amidst the predominantly male pharaohs a few names like Cleopatra and Nefertiti stand out. I was curious to see how they climbed to the top and were so successful. 

For Cleopatra, I took the path of a more scholarly work of non-fiction and read a recent book on Cleopatra’s daughter, Selene. Since that was rather dry in nature, I chose to go the route of historical fiction for Nefertiti. I looked at a few reviews online and picked up this book by Michelle Moran with rather low expectations. Once I started reading it, though I was amazed at how beautifully she had laid out the story. Right from choosing Nefertiti’s sister, Mutnodjmet as the narrator she created memorable characters that you could really identify with.  Nefertiti’s story is by itself engaging enough to keep you interested, but MIchelle really makes it enjoyable. From her afterword, I gathered that it is fairly accurate in terms of the major events and I will remember these much longer than the historical account of Selene that I read before this.

Cleopatras daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen

Author: Jane Draycott

We had just booked a vacation to Egypt and I quickly realized that I had almost no knowledge of Egyptian History. I had heard of the famous queens like Cleopatra and her entanglement with Caesar and Mark Anthony, but really didn’t know much of the details. I knew that there have been tomes written about these historical figures and didn’t know where to start. So I found a book that was recently published and had Cleopatra in the title 

Given that there’s isn’t much written history about Selene, it ended up being a lot of speculative stories based on a handful of paintings and artifacts. The first few sections of the book deal with Cleopatra and to me that was very educative as I had almost no knowledge of Cleopatra’s life. Since Roman historians were quite prolific during that time period there is plenty of material about Cleopatra and her lovers from which to draw from. Egypt in the first century BCE was a vassal state to Rome. Ptolemy XII Auletes (Cleopatras father) ascended the throne in 80BC and ended up paying significant bribes to Roman politicians to remain in power. These bribes were a significant burden on the Egyptian Treasury and Ptolemy was forced to significantly increase taxes to raise money to pay the Romans. There was widespread discontent in Egypt over this tax burden and it culminated in Ptolemy XII being forced to step down from the throne and fleeing to Rome for safety. Rome restored him to the throne but he died a few years later and had stipulated that brother and sister, Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII would jointly rule Egypt. 

It was common practice for Egyptian rulers to marry their siblings, and probably equally common for them to fight each other for the throne. It was no different with Ptolemy XIII, who seemed jealous that Cleopatra VII was getting more attention, and so managed to depose her and force her to flee to Syria. Later, when Julius Caeser pursued Pompey to Egypt, he joined forces with Cleopatra VII and forced Ptolemy XIII to flee the city and he eventually drowned while attempting to cross the Nile. 

Cleopatra now was free to ascend the throne and co-opted her younger brother Ptolemy XIV to rule with her. In this short while Cleopatra got pregnant and bore Ceaser a son, Caesarion. She quickly got rid of Ptolemy XIV and traveled to Rome to be close to Caesar. After Caesar was assassinated, Mark Anthony fell in love with Cleopatra and she returned to Egypt for her safety. Mark Anthony was fighting some wars in the East and needed money and help from Cleopatra. She showed up in style and charmed the pants off him — literally.  The rest is history. 

After both Cleopatra and Mark Anthony die, her daughter Cleopatra Selene II and her siblings were taken to Rome as prisoners. They were raised by Octavia, Anthony’s former wife and sister of Octavian Caesar. Cleopatra Selene was then married to King Juba II of Numidia and they ended up ruling Mauritania and large swathes of northern Africa. There’s little written documentation on these parts, so the author devotes just a few pages of speculative history to make her case that Cleopatra Selene was an awesome Queen. To be fair she and Juba ruled Mauretania for almost two decades!

In summary, this was a good introduction to me of Egyptian history. However, it was rather dry and there are probably much better books on Egyptian history of this period.

Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

Author: Gabrielle Zevin

Set in the idyllic setting of a small bookstore on a fictional island, the story revolves around A.J. Fikry, a curmudgeonly and grief-stricken bookseller whose life takes an unexpected turn. One day he receives an unexpected package at his bookstore, Island Books. The package contains a rare and valuable manuscript. This mysterious arrival becomes the turning point in A.J.’s life, setting the stage for unexpected changes and new beginnings.

A significant and heartwarming anecdote involves Maya, a baby left in the bookstore. As Maya grows, her first words are the names of classic short stories, reflecting the profound influence of literature on her upbringing and highlighting the unconventional but endearing nature of her childhood. 

The blossoming romance between A.J. Fikry and Amelia, the sales representative from Knightley Press, is a central and heartwarming anecdote. Their interactions, misunderstandings, and shared love for literature contribute to the novel's emotional depth.

One of the novel's strengths lies in its ability to capture the magic and solace found within the pages of books. A.J. Fikry, a character who initially appears closed off and resistant to change, undergoes a profound transformation as he experiences the joys and challenges of unexpected fatherhood.

Additionally, the novel cleverly integrates references to classic literature, creating a delightful experience for book enthusiasts. The various book-related discussions and the portrayal of the bookstore as a community hub underscore the novel's celebration of the written word and its ability to bring people together.

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

Author: Jonathan Kennedy

In the words of the author, “the modern world has been shaped by microbes as much as by women and men”.  I was exposed to the importance of germs in shaping our history, through Jared Diamond’s classic “Guns, Germs and Steel”. This book looks at the more recent past and has several examples where history having been written by the victors, did not give due importance to the role that infectious diseases played in determining the outcome.

Jonathan claims that the early Viking explorers like Erikson, were unsuccessful in colonizing the Americas, circa 1000 AD simply because germs were not on their side. It turns out that the Vikings way of life did not result in breeding pathogens, and consequently deriving immunity from them as a weapon.

Europeans early attempts at taking control of Africa were met with similar challenges. “the threat posed by infectious diseases, made it impossible for Europeans to colonize most of sub-Saharan Africa. in 1870 only 1/10 of the African land mass was under European control”, in contrast to the Americas that had almost completely been occupied by Europeans by this time. And Africa was rumored to be chock full of gold since ancient times. Mansa Musa, the 14th century ruler of Mali was said to have given away so much gold to beggars that he ruined neighboring Egypts economy for 12 years through hyperinflation. 

Malaria and yellow fever were pretty brutal and white men couldn’t survive these diseases until the rediscovery of quinine. In 1846 Thomas Thompson, a British Navy doctor, published his findings about the success of quinine in treating malaria in the Lancet. It turns out that quinine was the key for Europeans to open the floodgates to colonize Africa.

Malaria ended up coming to America with the arrival of slaves from Africa around 1500 AD. African slaves were more popular in the South because Malaria was much more prevalent in the South. The mosquitoes that spread malaria couldn’t survive the winters in the north. As a result northern states preferred white indentured servants who were more economically viable than slaves at the time. The author also presents evidence that slaves from malaria infested regions of Africa commanded higher prices. 

There are other interesting tidbits of information like “female anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes should be considered one of the founding mothers of the United States”.  According to the author, malaria killed eight times more British troops than American guns.

Overall, it seems like the author has scooped up all historical events that could be attributed to diseases and put forth his thesis. It gets repetitive after a while, and there’s no easy way to validate the true cause.

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

Author: Jonathan Kennedy

In the words of the author, “the modern world has been shaped by microbes as much as by women and men”.  I was exposed to the importance of germs in shaping our history, through Jared Diamond’s classic “Guns, Germs and Steel”. This book looks at the more recent past and has several examples where history having been written by the victors, did not give due importance to the role that infectious diseases played in determining the outcome.

Jonathan claims that the early Viking explorers like Erikson, were unsuccessful in colonizing the Americas, circa 1000 AD simply because germs were not on their side. It turns out that the Vikings way of life did not result in breeding pathogens, and consequently deriving immunity from them as a weapon.

Europeans early attempts at taking control of Africa were met with similar challenges. “the threat posed by infectious diseases, made it impossible for Europeans to colonize most of sub-Saharan Africa. in 1870 only 1/10 of the African land mass was under European control”, in contrast to the Americas that had almost completely been occupied by Europeans by this time. And Africa was rumored to be chock full of gold since ancient times. Mansa Musa, the 14th century ruler of Mali was said to have given away so much gold to beggars that he ruined neighboring Egypts economy for 12 years through hyperinflation. 

Malaria and yellow fever were pretty brutal and white men couldn’t survive these diseases until the rediscovery of quinine. In 1846 Thomas Thompson, a British Navy doctor, published his findings about the success of quinine in treating malaria in the Lancet. It turns out that quinine was the key for Europeans to open the floodgates to colonize Africa.

Malaria ended up coming to America with the arrival of slaves from Africa around 1500 AD. African slaves were more popular in the South because Malaria was much more prevalent in the South. The mosquitoes that spread malaria couldn’t survive the winters in the north. As a result northern states preferred white indentured servants who were more economically viable than slaves at the time. The author also presents evidence that slaves from malaria infested regions of Africa commanded higher prices. 

There are other interesting tidbits of information like “female anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes should be considered one of the founding mothers of the United States”.  According to the author, malaria killed eight times more British troops than American guns.

Overall, it seems like the author has scooped up all historical events that could be attributed to diseases and put forth his thesis. It gets repetitive after a while, and there’s no easy way to validate the true cause.

Age of Vice

Author: Deepti Kapoor

I read about “Age of Vice” in the New York Times where it was described as a combination of commercial and literary fiction, that will undoubtedly move a lot of units. It is set in the bustling city of New Delhi and follows the lives of 3 main characters Ajay, Neda and Sunny. Neda is an upper-class, educated woman journalist who is the connecting tissue between Sunny Wadia, the son of a corrupt and wealthy businessman and Ajay who is the faithful manservant. 

In developing these three main characters, Deepti chronicles an epic and high-intensity drama that has every kind of excess, from parties to political rallies and some stomach churning poverty as well. Deepti knows how to spin a good yarn and from the moment you pick up the book, you will not want to put it down. 

The NY Times aptly sums it up as having “echoes of Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather’, in terms of its mobbed-up apex predators” and I couldn’t agree more.

A Bad Character

Author: Deepti Kapoor

Deepti Kapoor’s book “Age of Vice” had just come out and I immediately got in line at my local library to borrow the book. While I waited, I decided to pick her debut novel “A Bad Character” which was published in 2015. 

One thing is certain from the start; Deepti knows how how to tell a high-wire tale. The book opens with “My boyfriend died when I was twenty-one. His body was left lying broken on the highway out of Delhi”.  She writes a powerful prose, in short sentences, but with high intensity. 

She writes about a young woman’s desires, both sexual and existential.  What is even more impressive is how these stories are set in an Indian city where such mores are uncommon to say the least. She talks about her affair with a “wild animal dressed in human clothes”.  Their favorite haunts are cafes in Khan Market, New Delhi, “where it’s civilized, where there are bookstores and florists”. 

To contrast her wild side, she lives with a conservative aunt who is constantly trying to arrange her marriage.  Deepti’s prose is direct and to the point and her descriptions of Delhi are brutal and beautiful. This is not your typical romance, but it will grab your attention until you turn the last page.