The book is an amazing story of Shackleton’s expedition to south pole. Many books  have been written and movies made on Shackleton’s failed expedition, but this is  the first person account.

Sir Shackleton’s met with shipwreck in the icy waters of  the antarctic. This ship the Endurance was trapped in the antarctic ice and was eventually crushed by  the ice-packs of freezing winter. The crew survived the winter on the ice flow and on under favourable conditions set sail to Elephant island on an open boat James Caird. Elephant Island was an uninhabited island where the crew stayed on for the summer. Shackleton and five of his trusted sailors departed on a mission to South Georgia to seek help. Those were the days when there were no radio or wireless communications.

Shackleton and his men survived on only seal and penguin meat with several of his crew members developing scurvy 

A fine narration of human endurance against the forces of nature!!!

This book is not really about this airline.  Its about our very own Richard Branson.  Its interesting to note how similar the two are.

Capt. Gopinath grew up in the small village in the banks of Hemavati river.  The inspiration of his life was his dad, a school teacher.

I’m writing this after couple of months of having read the book. Part of the reason I do this is becuse then, I only remember the salient points from the book.

Capt. Gopinath’s story do not start or end with Air Deccan, its only a small episode in the life of this free spirited personality.

I found the early chapters of the book more inspiring and interesting than the latter.  Capt Gopinath was the first in his village to learn join the army and serve the country in the 1970 Bangladesh war.  His accounts of  of the war and  the later posting in the inaccessible terrains of  indo-chinese border is awesome.

His journey as an enterpreneur does not start until he decides to quit the army and decide to start as a farmer. With the piece of land his family got as an compensation against the land his family gave up to the government, he began as a farmer. His land was somewhere close to Hosur.

Early 90s were the time of great change in the technology industry. That’s the time when PC became the dominant force, the internet started showing its presence and the rise in Open systems, aka Unix.

When I started my career, it was all Unix. Client Server systems ruled the enterprise, windows was making is early presence felt. Object Oriented programming was also a new boy of the town. This was the time when IBM mainframe was on the decline. Frankly I never knew IBM was in this deep trouble during those days.

The book is remarkable in the sense, Louis gives first person account of  what he saw when he joined the company early 90′s and describes the remarkable turnaround he was able to accomplish within a decade. The computer industry was at cross roads at the time Louis was brought in to turnaround IBM.  Industry pundits were all ‘gaga’ around the PC revolution and had written off IBM as a company making expensive mainframes that didn’t have a future.

Many had advised Louis to break up IBM into smaller companies. In spite of the fact that Louis had little background of high tech industry, Louis stuck to his plan to revive IBM and invested in new areas of growth. Now after more than 2 decades, IBM has retained its commanding positions.

The article about terrorism lacks novelty and questioning the existence of global warming will not go well with many readers.

The book certainly has entertainment value and  Levitt and Dubner’s sytle of writing excellent.

A well written short book gives and insight about the life of common man of south america and this book is certainly not much about the socialist moment.  Che describes in graphical detail the experience they had while making a journey from Argentina to the pacific coast and up to Venezuela and brazil.

Rashmi continues in this book about entrepreneurs similar to the one she talks about in the previous book ‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’. I’m half way through the book and there are indeed some interesting stories. 

First observations about the book; It costs just Rs 150, hats off the publisher Ekalavya educations foundation for making the book so acessible for the public at large.

The book is written as a series of independent articles of enterpreneurs who’ve made a significant conribution and were pineoors in their field. Few of the interesting stories are of Prem Ganapathy, Saurav Vyas, Gaurav Rathore, Satyajit Singh and Chetan Maini and Mahima Mehra.  One of the most interesting read was about Satyajit Singh founder of Shatki Sudha Industries. He’s single handedly created an entire industry of Makhana in Bihar.

In the world of business biographies, Rashmi Bansal do have a story to tell that is uniquely indian. Certainly a interesting book to read.  And btw, Rashmi’s quirky use of Hindi many turn many a readers off!

In the book Outliers, Malcom turns his attention on what makes some people successful while others are not.  Contrary to the popular belief that all successful people have made is because of hard work and hard work alone,  Malcom disagrees.  The book argues in length with example of  baseball players, Beatles, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and several others, that to be successful needs more than  hard work. A theory mentioned in the book is the 10000 hours rule.  Everyone successful in any field it may be has  put in at least 10000 hours ( that is 10 years of work).

The novel has a architecture as its theme. The language of the book is fluid however the story is nothing more than like a day time soap opera.

Well, I didn’t finish reading the book and let it midway.

This book is certainly a good composition of indian entrepreneurs educated at IIMA. Some of them are well known such as founder of Naukri.com. Some are people behind brands such as Sintex.

The title of the book was inspired by Steve Jobs famous Commencement speech at standord.

One of the good insirational business books I’ve read in recent times.

This is  a fiction I’ve read after a long break. There’s a lot of chatter about this book ever since it work the year 2009 B prize.  I do not have much fascination about reading fiction writing, however since this is a Booker winner I’d given it a try.

The book portrays the darker side of India, much like the movie slumdog millionaire. The book is a narration of Balram, a driver turned Internet entrepreneur, written as a letter to the Chinese premier. Why should Balram write a letter to the Chinese premier? It goes  rather strange and unexplained in the whole book!

The book is rather interesting to read in the first half. The life of the Balram as a driver and servant, references to a place called ‘Darkness’  are true to reality, but the latter half of  the book is rather out of touch with reality. As described in the book, Balram robs and murders his master and runs away to Banglore with 7 lakh rupees. With the stolen money he setups his own travel company to ferry employees to IT firm.  How can a illiterate boy, with absolutely no charisma or prior business acumen all of a sudden create this well managed business? Arvind Adiga do not have an answer to this in the book!

The world outside relates to India as as one of the BRIC states competing and cooperating with China in the world economy. It also sees India as Outsourceing  destinations. The book is primarily written for an audience outside India who can very well relate to Bangalore , China and outsourcing.  One of Balram’s master is an US returned guy  married to an American. Again an attempt to relate with an western audiance.  The outside world hardly can relate of Balram the protagonist in this book.  Arvind Adiga’s attempt to relate the two world is really a failure and far remote from reality!

I’ve read Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things. God of small things is certainly is a book deserving a Booker Prize, but this one by Arvind Adiga is certainly not frankly in my opinion!

I generally like the way VS Naipaul writes, but does not necessarily agree with his beliefs. I’m sure tons of people would agree. Go follow the amazon comments.

Naipaul refers to RK Narayans novels in the book and in a way accuses him of  not mentioning about the politics!

The books will certainly be of interest to people who are born after the emergency . Again, we do not know how much of these are well researched and how much is from prejudice.

He starts the with the world war era followed by US occupation and how it changed Japan during those days. It was in these days that Akio, son of a prominent business man started with the idea of a company. He had developed a solid technical foundation  in engineering and sciences working for the imperial army that later helped in setting the Sony company. The book has vivid stories of how the first tape recorder takes shape and many of the now defunct transistor radio, VCR and walk man. The book gives insight about the world before the transistors when the vacuum tube ruled the world.

Details of how Sony was established in America and Europe is quite interesting. The books delves into the psyche of a Japanese business as opposed to the American way of business.

Written in the 80s , the book has little reference to the business world as we know today with WTO . Its surprising to note that the book has very little information about the technology we know today with the Internet and the personal computers and mp3 players and cell phones.

What’s more relevant  to note in the recession ridden world of today is the the frugal lifestyles of Japanese businessman.  While US CEO earn millions in pay and perks, Japanese CEOs  earn many order less than the Americans. Interesting to note that Akio mocks the US culture to sue. Millions spend by US corporations to save their back from frivolous lawsuits could be used for in R&D and adding value to the customers.

Jim also writes about several other man eater leapord and tigers in this book.

 I wanted to read this book for a long time and finally this week I bought it from crosswords. Surely this book is one of the most interesting business biographies I”ve read in recent times.  Its certainly as inspiring as Dr Kalam’s Wings of Fire.

Dr Kurien’s story is strikingly similar to Muhammad Yunus’s. His book Banker to the Poor has striking similarities. Both of them were immensely patriotic, had to find their way in the maze of bureaucracy and corruption remarkably successful at it.  Both had a perseverance to reach their goal and work to empower the poor. I see Yunus’s book as a companion book.  On a side note, speaking of perseverance, here’s an image that that does justice to the meaning of word perseverance.

This books has lots of inspiring and interesting encounters Dr Kurian had. This includes almost all the prime ministers of India, reference to Sardar Patel and her daughter Maniben Patel and Dr Kurian’s mentor Tribhuvandas Patel.

While searching on the web for Dr Kurian, I realized there’s still no Wikipedia entry on him. I also found this article from a fellow blogger http://amoalsale.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/i-too-had-a-dream-dr-verghese-kurien/ 

I’ll certainly write  about the book more once I’m done reading and also quote a few memorable lines from this book in my next post.

By the way, there’s an online link  “Bharat Ratna for Dr Verghese Kurien“. Please take few minutes to sign it.

Among all the business biographies I’ve read so far, this one is the most unimpressive one. Dell’s style of writing is rather not very exciting and unlike other biographies I’ve read does’nt give much insight about the company.

The success of the Dell model is direct selling. There’s not much details about this model in this book. Compare this book against the “Totoya Way” . Jeffry Linker talks at length about the totoya process , details about auto industry. Not much insights about the computer hardware industry or the Dell’s process in this book. I came across a review that resonates my opinion here. http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_10/b3619033.htm

However the book does gives justice to Michael Dells vision about the company and his relentless passion for to meet customer excellence. Dell perhaps is one of the few companies that takes customer service very very seriously.

Its been a long time since I wanted to read about southwest. An airline that could withstand all the turmoils faced by the airline industry. A lot has been discussed and written about southwest in the web and all over.

This one is a well written book and speaks volumes about the “Positively Outrageous Service“  and what keeps southwest apart from a regular airline.

Another book on airline industry and customer service is Moment of Truth

Also in reading the book “spider and starfish” there are references of how Muhannad Yunus had saved Bangladesh from becoming another hotbed of Islamic terrorists.

This book is a remarkable read and an inspirational book on how relentless persistance can change the world around us.  This is a story of how a simple idea of giving credit without collateral can make such a big impact on the life of so many poor, and most importantly raise the morale of the poor.

What is noteworthy is that grammen bank has never been a government initiative. Muhammad Yunus mentions about innumerable instances where government bureaucracy and the banking system  was the stumbling block in his initiaives.

Completed reading the autobiography of Richard Branson. This is a truly inspirational story of this celebrity CEO.

He describes his tryst with the Indian bureaucracy in a rather humerous way.

This book by author Daniel Goleman  is a classic and a must-read for every employee. The book specifically looks into the emotional competencies required at workplace. As a manager I’ve often seem non technical employees excels in their work where as technical and many of the intelligent employees fail. All of these skills are definitely attributed to emotional intelligence.

I follow the blog ‘http://www.manager-tools.com/’. This blog/podcast refers to the concepts referred to in this book and is an excellent resource for budding managers.

One of the noteworthy subject in this book is about reference to Amyglada. A little gland in your brain controlling emotions such as rage, fear, anxiety. This is a really interesting read, where the author in details talks about the way this organ controls the emotions.

Reading this book takes you to your high-school history lessons and giving a varied perspective on what you’ve read in school. The book has detailed account of Mahatma Gandhi,Lord Mountbatten, Nathuram Godse , Muhammad Ali Jinnah  and many others who has contributed to the modern history of India. Reading through the book, reader gets a detailed account of the issue with Kashmir.

Reading the book from the current perspective, Nehru was right in many of the decisions he’d taken during the formative years of the Indian republic. In my view he was right in withholding the amount to be given to P as part of partition settlement. He’d been pressurized into referring the Kashmir dispute to United Nations, and he was right in opposing Gandhi in laying a solid industrial foundation for the country.

Pakistan on the other hand was a state not created from ideology but from the hunger of power.The book details of the horrors of partition inflicted on the common people of India and Pakistan. Quoting several veterans of WWII, the a reference mentioned in several places the book is about is “The horrors of WWII is nothing compared to what I’ve seen in the 2 weeks of partition”.

Dominique Lapierre  has recently given an interview to Indian Express. Read it here http://www.indianexpress.com/story/245824.html

He’s talked about  about what went into the writing of this book. Rather than me writing the concluding remark about my opinion of the book, the  excerpt below should be a apt summarization. This interview is part of the an “Idea Exchange” series of interviews. I’m taking the liberty of including the excerpts here.

MANDAKINI GAHLOT: What kind of research went into the writing of The City of Joy?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: What happened was that I’d done Freedom at Midnight, spending months, years in India, and I fell in love with India because of Gandhi, Indian history, all that. With my wife, I wanted to show my gratitude to the Indian people, big maharajas as well as coolies from Calcutta. I wanted to show them my gratitude by doing something that could help them.

And that’s how I went to Calcutta with the share of my royalties in my pocket and I wanted to see Mother Teresa. At 5 o’clock in the morning, I said, ‘Mother, I have brought some money. Do you know an institution working for leprous children?’ She said, ‘It’s God who has sent you.’ There was an English gentleman who had opened a home in Barrackpore for leprous children from the slums, to cure and educate them. And he had no more money and was on the verge of closing his home, called Udayan. So I met this gentleman. We were very impressed to see everything. I gave him the money that I had brought and said, ‘This is to help you pay your debts.’ And I made an extravagant promise: ‘You’ll never close your home.’ Then I went back to Paris and wrote an article about this centre. In the end I said if only 3,000 of us were to send Rs 1,000 every year, we could save 500 children from death. We were living near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and about a week later, our house keeper came up and said, ‘Mr Lapierre, I don’t know what’s happening, but there is a truck from the postal service downstairs with nine postal bags for you. What should we do?’ Fortunately, my wife comes from a family of nine children. She’s got six sisters. So we told the six sisters to come to our apartment, took the nine bags, and for three weeks we sorted out all the letters. There were messages of hope: ‘Please say to Mr Stevens in Calcutta he should never close his centre.’ In one envelope there were two wedding rings, and on a sheet of paper it said: “We have worn these rings for 40 years of happiness. Today this gold will be more important for your children in Calcutta. Do not thank us.’ I think we had tears in our eyes.

So we could send the most beautiful telegram to this gentleman in Calcutta, saying: ‘You will never close your home.’ And we went back to meet some of the members of the family that we had, in a sense, adopted. One day this gentleman took us to one of the slums where he had picked up his first leprous child. This (story) was to become The City of Joy.

I understood while meeting the people of that slum that I was a writer-journalist with the heroes of humanity. People who had nothing and yet seem to have everything. Because they were standing up, they were celebrating, they were sharing with those poorer than themselves. There’s this beautiful line by Tagore: ‘Adversity is great, but man is greater than adversity.’ And I said to Dominique my wife (she’s also called Dominique, but she’s Big Dominique, and I’m Small Dominique): ‘Let’s buy some writing pads, some pens, and tell the story of these people. Because this is the story about the soul of humanity, the heart of humanity.’

And we stayed for two years in that slum. They are very poor. They have brought into an urban environment the culture of their villages. Every day, there was some celebration happening. Later working in the Bronx, with poor people, I found those who were disconnected from their past. But these people were not.

One day I was woken up by an orchestra walking by in the alley. I said to my friend, ‘Which god are you celebrating today?’ And she said, ‘We are not celebrating any god, we are celebrating the birth of spring.’ In a place with no trees, no flowers, no butterflies, no birds, these people had the guts to celebrate an event they will never see the manifestations of! I thought these people are the heroes of humanity. And that’s how I wrote The City of Joy. I went to my publisher, who said, ‘Who’s gonna read this? Come on, write happy stories.’ I said, ‘I don’t care if two people read it. I have to deliver the story.’ The result was than nine million copies of the book were sold. It was made into a major movie. Today it’s a cult book. I still receive hundreds of letters from people around the world, some saying, ‘I’ve just read The City of Joy. I was desperate, I was about to commit suicide.’ One day I received from a woman in San Francisco a cheque of $ 1,500, and she said: ‘I’ve read The City of Joy and I decided to stop smoking. And this is the amount I spend for my cigarettes in one year. You’ll receive this amount every January 1.’ I’m happy now that the book is very well read in India, which is very important.

I’d not known much about Dominique Lapierre, the author of this book until I started writing this post. Dominique Lapierre certainly has done a truly remarkable research for this books in the slums of Calcutta. Also worth noting is the contemporary nature of the story. Set somewhere in the 70s there are references about emergence of naxalism in West Bengal. A very moving book indeed.

I’m only halfway done with this book. I’ll certainly write a concluding remark on this book after I’ve finished it.

This book is a good account of the globalization as it stands today.

While in my stay at US from 1997 to 2002, globalization was a buzzword. I’d the habit of listening to talk radio. Those days most of the talk in US was about opening up market in the developing world for US companies.

Things have changed since, reading Thomas Friedman’s book makes us believe so. Its moving of the jobs from US and other developed countries to the developing ones. All of a sudden the world has become smaller, thanks to the internet and innovation in supply chain and logistics.

The western countries may not have gained access to the markets of the developing world, to the degree the talk show hosts in US had expected , however it has certainly got access to the cheap labor.

The globalization 3.0 as Thomas Friedmen mentions in the book is about ‘triple convegence’

Finished reading Sept 2007.  William Dalrymple has in is characteristic style, elegently described about the last emprorror of india, Bahadur Shah Jafar.   The story of the emporror is just the backdrop of a more eventful incident, the 1857 mutiny. This is a well researched book and describes the politics during the period resulting in 1857 mutiny. Reading through the book, you’d feel your in the era of old Delhi with the gazals of Galib and Jafar himself.

http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com/

Finished Reading July 2007

Read what a fellow blogger has to say about this book here.

For a long time, all that I’d in this blog post is just a picture of cover of the this book. I’ve been late to realize, I’m not doing justice to  my readers by just having  the cover of this book. This post is one of the most highly viewed of my blogposts;  So  I decided to pen down something on today (dec 21st 2008)

Its been a while ago since I’ve read this book, and still quite a while ago since I’ve read Jack Welch’s biography. 

I liked Jack’s original work better than this one.  It covers many of the management Jack is believed to have practiced and developed in GE. Given the kind of audience this book is intended for, my belief is they’d already be aware of these, although it may be questionable how many of then actually practices these management philosophies.

Its one thing to be actually be aware of the right and workable management approaches, and its a different thing to actually practice it.  That’s what keeps Jack Welch apart from other managers. The book does explains you the management practices and philosophies in GE, but GE has been around for long before Jack was heading it and the management policies in GE would have been as old as GE itself. What makes Jack different from others was Jack’s zealous pursuit to put these philosophies to practice.  If you have the innate qualities of  “Jack Welch type manager’, you’d not need this book, you’d anyway be practicing what’s there in this book!

Would I certainly recommend this book as it stands for the no nnonsense approach to management. A good read for a budding manager or a beginner to management. But then,  search the web, and you’d find pretty much all the management books and consultants parroting the same things!.  And do read Jack’s first book, “Straight from the gut” if you’d need a real insight into Jack’s management approach.

Review by a fellow blogger. http://toogood2read.blogspot.com/2007/07/swami-and-friends-by-rknarayan.html

Its a audio version of this book I’ve listened to.

What makes an old man, struggle with a marlin caught in his fishing geat, fight the sharks and finally bring back only the skeletol remains of this great fish?

Ernest Hemingway has the answer for this remarkable feat of a man against nature in this book.

A book work having in any book shelf!

Jeffrey Archer is a remarkable story teller and this novel is a testimony to it.

The reason for this blogpost to be date so is because this is the time around which I recollect reading some of the interesting books and movies.

I’m maintining the blog in cronological order of the books I’ve read and included by personal views about these material. Most of the entries are about books I’ve read , but there are occational post about movies and tv serials.

Happy reading…