The World Is flat: The Globalised World In The Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman
This is a remarkable book dealing with the consequences as well as opportunities created by the digital age. One sentence from the book summarises Friedman’s thesis: "The French Revolution, the American Revolution and the Indian democracy are all based on social contracts whose dominant feature is that authority comes from the bottom up, and people can and do feel self-empowered to improve their lot. People living in such contexts tend to spend their time focusing on what to do next, not on whom to blame next."
Brinda Karat
Fragments Of A Life: A Family Archive by Mythily Sivaraman
Mythily is a colleague in the All India Democratic Women’s Association. We have been working together for nearly 30 years. This book is about her grandmother, Subbalakshmi. Mythily has pieced her life from the fragments of papers and notes, and an occasional diary she left behind in a tin trunk. It’s a painstakingly researched account of a Tamil Brahmin woman’s life at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s a fascinating account of how women, even when silenced and taught to deny their feelings and thoughts, learn to use this silence as a survival technique.
Milind Murli Deora
Leadership by Rudolph W. Giuliani
Giuliani’s book was very useful to me because it describes leadership through case studies. I could learn many useful lessons from it because of the various scenarios.
Rahul Bose
Dark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo To Cape Town by Paul Theroux
Theroux is so taciturn for a writer. But I like his laco-nic prose which reveals so much through its terseness. He is unquestionably the best travel writer. I am also reading Pablo Neruda’s Collected Poems. I have read his poems in anthologies but reading his entire collection I am struck by the balance he strikes between the ordinary and the startling revelations simply told. There is not a trace of egotism in his poetry.
