What Have I Read of Late

What it Takes by Stephen Schwarzman Read: October 2021 Well written memoir by one of the most successful asset managers of all time, Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone. Most of the books written by otherwise successful CEOs are unreadable. Not this one. However, the book may be well written, but the story itself is nothing to write home about. Its a usual success story of a super successful entrepreneur. He is born in a middle class family, is good at academics and sports, goes to some of the top colleges, gets recruited by the top banks, then does well there, branches out on own, and builds a mega corporation. There are no heroic episodes, no thrills of ups and downs, just a well written diary. There are flashes of brilliance in deal making, philanthropic activities in the end, dabbling in political ambitions in the middle, and so on. Stephen Schwarzman is born in a Jewish small business family. Is a decent athlete. Goes to Yale on sports abilities. Leaves sports, concentrates ...

  Blood & Oil by Bradley Hope Read: September 2021 This book published in 2020 and tracing the arc of rise of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman (or MBS), reads like a fast paced thriller. The book essentially covers the 20 years of the life of prince till 2020, his evolution as the risk taker, liberalizer, and the autocrat. MBS was born as one of the numerous grandsons of the founder of Saudi Arabia and son of one of the powerful princes. For the first 15 years or so of his life, he did not show any visible signs of what he was to become later. His older half-brothers were much more accomplished than him- one being an academic, another the country's first astronaut, yet another a fighter pilot, and another world energy specialist and so on. But MBS had one good fortune to his side- affection of his father who doted on him. And as the luck would have it, father of MBS ended up being the King when few of the others in the line to the throne died of old age or ...

  The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli Read: September 2021 Ironically, this somewhat dense book written on time, strives to prove that time is not an essential component of physics. Written by a physicist working in the field of quantum loop gravity extends the Einsteinian theory to emphasize that space and time are interchangeable and that time is not the arbiter of past and future; that work is done by presence of heat, or entropy. The ideas take a little time to get into your head, but it is because of what the author says is Newtonian indoctrination of the concept of time in our high school textbooks. He goes on to elaborate on the arc of history of debate about the nature of time. Aristotle considered time not as an independent entity, but only as a measurement of change. On the other hand, Newton elevated concept of time as a 'true' phenomena which would exist even if nothing else changes in the world. The term 't' became ubiquitous in his equations and slowly has ...

  The Black Count by Tom Reiss Read: September 2021 This is the fascinating story of Alexandre Dumas, not the celebrated author, but that of his father and namesake. This story, if not true, would seem to leap out of the famous author's book. In fact, a lot of what we read in The Count of Monte Cristo is inspired from the amazing life of his father. Senior Dumas was one of the foremost Generals of the revolutionary France. Amazingly, he joined French army as a lowly soldier, a dragoon , sort of cannon fodder, lower than even an infantry soldier. Within 10 years, helped by his staunch republicanism and currents of the revolution, he had become a General at the age of 31. And he goes on to carve historic victories for French army with his brute power and derring-do. He became a General when Napoleon was just a captain. But the brilliance, ambition, and cunning of the future dictator meant that Dumas had to serve in Napoleon's army later on, most notably at the siege of Fortress ...

  The Pope of Physics by Gino Segre Read: August 2021 This is a biography of Italy's most famous scientist Enrico Fermi who is duly credited with the breakthrough experiment which heralded the atomic age and he also created world's first atomic reactor (in a squash court!). Fermi came up about in a country which unlike its much advanced northern neighbor, did not even have a theoretical physics department in the whole of country when he took up the subject. Despite that early hindrance, Fermi went on to dazzle the physics world at an early age, created a group of scientists in Rome which became a center of quantum (and later atomic and nuclear) physics which was as good as any in Gottingen, Munich, or Berlin. In time he became both a theoretical and experimental physicist, a combination the likes of which the world has never since since. So a little sad though, for all his brilliant contributions to the field of physics, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1938 for discovery of a n...

  The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert Read: June 2021 This book is about the enormous changes human beings are bringing upon the world we cohabit with other species, and contrasts with the other five major extinctions which happened in the past. The previous annihilations were mostly gradual, and also sudden (remember dinosaurs?). The current extinction phase comes under the sudden category, and is different from the previous ones because it is man made and that it so rapid. A new period, called Anthropocene, had to be coined to put to name to what is going on. The author visited various research sites in the world, including islands off Australia & Italy, rainforest in Brazil, bat caves in US, bird nesting sites in Iceland, et al to write quite an authentic piece of combinatorial research. Some of the facts that hit you in the face: amphibians are going extinct at 45 thousand times their normal rate; an average American pumps in 7 pounds of carbon the ocean each day whic...

  The Swerve: How The World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt Read: June 2021 This the story of Poggio, a Florentine man, who was a Papal secretary to 8 successive Popes, and his discovery of long lost ancient Greek and Latin texts during early 15th century. In particular, it is about his finding of the book ‘On the Nature of Things’, by Greek philosopher, Lucretius in 1417 and the repercussions it had on the world we inhabit today. After the fall of Roman Empire, Christianity had managed to snuff out all the traces of ‘pagan’ philosophy from the collective memory. As western civilization seeped into the rot of dark ages, some intellectuals started the quest to hunt for the banished texts in the archives of hard to reach monasteries. Upon discovery, this aforementioned book lit a spark which spread like a wildfire torching fundamentalist Christian beliefs and lighted the path for philosophers, scientists, and intellectuals for next many centuries till its message completely seep...

  This Is How They Tell Me How The World Ends by Nicole Perlroth Read: May 2021 Terrifying book, even though poorly written. This book starts with hobbyist hackers and then reveals the state backed cyber theft, cyber bullying, and even cyber terrorism. Even for sceptics like me who know that journalists are prone to fear mongering, I am now convinced that nation states are beefing up their cyber warfare capabilities. There are very low entry barriers (you don’t need billion dollar bombers); can remain anonymous (no one can pin point who exactly attacked with viruses ( wannacry and notpetya ); asymmetrical (you can’t send tanks in retaliation). While Chinese are more interested in cyber theft (former CIA director called it the biggest wealth drain in history); Russians are intent on fishing in troubled waters (their 2016 election meddling was super successful); North Koreans are petty burglars (they tried to steal $1bn from Bangladeshi central bank); Iranians are vengeful (they trie...

  The World For Sale by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy Read: April 2021 This book is about rise and rise of commodity traders in the last fifty years. Their extraordinary growth came in spurts due to a succession of geopolitical events: i) it started with wave of nationalization of oil assets leading to 'seven sisters' of oil companies losing their oligopoly in fixing price of crude oil by 1970s ii) breakup of communist block by early 90s added to the list of clients of oil traders iii) coming of World Trade Organization increased the number of many developing countries clamoring to sell their natural resources to rich nations, but had no wherewithal to either find the customers, negotiate, or organize for logistics. Traders stepped in, especially in case where the buyer needed a buffer party while dealing with unsavory characters. iv) and the biggest of them, rise of insatiable appetite of China These factors led to rise of super powerful commodity traders like March Rich and h...

  Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry by Arthur Herman Read: April 2021 Churchill was 5 years younger than Gandhiji, their lives entangled with each other for about 40 odd years. Both could not have been more different persons than each other. One was the last of Victorian era imperialists, and the other hell bent on wrecking the empire on which the sun never set. What this book brings out is the kind of insanity it brought out in an otherwise hard-nosed, rational Churchill. Even in the midst of the ‘Battle of Britain, he used to go mad with rage on the topic of giving any quarter to what he derisively called the ‘ half naked fakir’ . His colleagues could never understand his overwhelming hatred for Gandhiji, the kind of which Churchill did not display even for Hitler. Churchill was the son of an aristocrat cum politician, Randolph Churchill, from the famous house of Marlborough. His mother was an American. Senior Churchill had high political ambitions, becoming Secretary of I...

  The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel Read: April 2021 This book reads like a reality check, especially when you are feeling too bullish on the markets. It is a grandma’s advise of saving money or the rainy day, the role luck plays in our success or failure (Bill Gates went to one of the handful of high schools in the world which had a computer); satisfaction of having enough; being wealthy is just a matter of not making large mistakes…… nothing that you may not already know. It is written in an engaging style. A breezy read for a day over the weekend.

The Blood Telegram Read: March 2021 This book is set in March-Dec 1971 will sicken you to your stomach. It is largely based on recorded oval office conversations between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, in whose hands the fate of millions of persecuted Bengalis lay. In the end, the duo knowingly let the genocide in Bangladesh happen as they were negotiating a crucial diplomatic breakthrough with China, and Pakistan’s dictator Yahya Khan was the intermediary. I have always considered the astoundingly brilliant Kissinger to be the real butcher of Bangladesh. What new I got from the book was glimpses of his utter insensitivity towards human suffering. That too from a man who lost 13 of his close relatives to the horrors of holocaust. At one point, he snickers about Yahya getting a kick out of massacring Hindus! And casual racism of his boss is well known, nauseating nevertheless. There is only one instance in the entire episode where Kissinger feels the horrors of war when he is informe...

  The Disappearing Spoon Read: Feb 2021 Periodic table is like a puzzle, which scientists have been trying to solve for almost two centuries now, like a child fitting her Lego blocks . Last hundred years have seen this endeavor becoming fiercer with scientists furiously racing towards filling the vacant blocks and thus get the naming rights. Each of these two letter abbreviations come alive with background stories of triumph, tragedy, and travesty. Marie Curie discovered two radioactive elements: she named first of these Polonium, after her beloved but non-existent homeland of Poland. Now it is known more as the poison of choice for murdering Russian dissidents. Curie would have been mortified. The brilliant physicist Enrico Fermi was awarded Nobel for discovering element 93 in 1934. Only later it occurred that he had discovered fission by accident and not a new element. When element 93 was later discovered by another US physicist, Nobel committee had to twist itself in knots to aw...