This is a very well written book that brings out a political perspective on Globalization, Free Trade and its impact/consequences.

Unlike most books which run into conspiracy theories of Capitalism running amok and corporations driving covert agendas, this book instead takes a look at the political scenarios existing in various key countries & the complex interplay between the political history of the state & the impact of capitalism & hence the very role of the State. After dissecting Britain & the US, the author goes on to give very well researched examples from Russia and East Asian States - he covers the political history of each of these places & clearly outlines how Capitalism morphs into a regional variant under different political systems and the consequences of this morphing.

The author powerfully argues how Capitalism & Globalization are not delinked from the role of the State ... and debunks the myth of a single universal culture. The book ends on a dark note where it raises serious questions about the presence & effectiveness of a Global governing body to handle the inadequacies of capitalism, driven by technological globalization.

Its not an easy book to read, and requires a good knowledge of political history (US/UK/Russia/Singapore/China/Japan) & basic economics; but once finished, it is a definitive eye opener from a political perspective, on how the situation today has developed and what the future holds out.

It is hard to not want to read a book about how the founder of Apple was sacked by the guy he brought in himself, to lead the company. And that is precisely what the first part of the book is about. In a tale of roaring passion and excitement, we walk through pages in almost quivering excitement as we read about the stony-mahagony culture of Pepsi, the young irreverent west coast start-ups, the passion and idealism of youth, the quest for making a difference to the world, the heady mix of million dollar stock options and unruly aesthetic genius... and how it all culminated at the altar of capitalistic zeal and resulted in Steve Jobs being sacked by John Sculley and the board.

The second half of the book though, takes a downspin. From the exciting tale of the first half, where John Sculley's fleshing out his character is seen as contributing to the intrigue of the story, the second part of the book is more of trumpet-blowing. It deals with how Sculley and his team 'rescued' Apple and converted it to the company it is today. As such, the book is also made a little vexatious with Sculley's sermons of management that are intervowen between chapters.

Reco : Read the first half, skim through second half... But definitely worth reading if you're interested in the human side of business dealings!

For those expecting some rigorous treatment of the subject and a comprehensive overview, this is not the book. But for those wishing to spend a few lazy hours reading up an interdisciplinary delight, this is a good pick. While the treatment of the subject is superficial and introductory, the language and style of writing is admittedly engrossing! The author SJ, manages to inflect his prose with biting sarcasm or simply plain humor at the just the right places, to keep one turning one page onto another.

Another very good element in this book is the numerous references and potential reading lists that one can create. In covering as vast and 'disconnected' a realm of subjects as touted in its cover, SJ traverses a wide expanse of literary sources and is liberal in quoting them... which allows readers with an interest in specific minutiae to explore their subject that bit deeper. To that extent, this book serves as a wonderfully easy to read primer on the subject of emergence; it can probably be likened to Universality by Mark Ward.... without going into the rigorous depths of Chaos (Gleick), and yet serving up something where one is left with numerous trails of thought, each with its own army of books to explore and pursue.

Thats the first rule I broke and picked up this book to read. One of the interesting aspects of this book is the writing style. Focused and clear, each section usually begins with approaches to situations followed by 'conventional' managers, which has the reader usually vigorously agreeing to. And immediately the book shows how great managers handle the exact same issues differently. In doing so, the book acts as a nice little mirror we hold up to ourselves and quietly contemplate our own styles and management methods.

While the book does seem like a covert sales pitch for Gallup's methodology, the learnings and experiences shared are invaluable to a persons' understanding of herself and her style of operating. The authors dont force their point of view, rather they let the reader gently arrive at a perspective that meshes in harmoniously with her existing style.

This is one of those books which helps reformat the hard-disk of your brain, and leave it altered to view reality anew. Definitely worth a read... and best used by sharing the book with your reportees!

DA has a wonderful writing style that makes reading her book a sensory pleasure in its own. At the risk of sounding sexist, it must be mentioned that the power of this book lies in the wonderfully delicate and detailed descriptions of the various senses and their experiences. While DA has chosen a subject that is reasonably biological, it is her descriptive flair for the minutiae, her almost artistic way of writing and her sense of joy and wonder which she conveys; all make this book a wonderfully engrossing tale about our sense organs.

While DA succeeds at opening our eyes (and ears, nose.... etc) to the world around us, perhaps the only shortcoming of the book lies in creating expectations in the reader of a rigorous treatment in the biological/evolutionary development of the sense organs. The reader seeking such a detailed analysis of the senses and their development would be served better by looking elsewhere. However, this book is a tasty little morsel and food for thought.

Definitely worth a read.

One needn't read the blurb to know that DO is a professor. The writing style, the subject chosen and the way it has been treated, the examples given... all point towards a very advanced mind! The power of this book lies in the relentless power of the ideology and the prose to raise questions in the mind of the reader, and forcing the reader to reconsider some of his/her own beliefs and viewpoints.

The professor makes this journey even more enjoyable through his deliciously witty sarcasms and digs at the capitalistic society of today and its spin-doctors of advertising. Through numerous examples and penetrating questions, the writer clearly supports his point of view that humanity today is rushing headlong into the future, with a blind reliance on science and technology/forms of government/economic theories... and this faith he claims, seems to mirror an almost religious fervor. The writer clearly illustrates how humanity is increasingly trading its unknown future for short term gains of a few in positions of power to exploit those gains.

The book deals with the subject of designing the future with Nature in mind, and speaks of the nature of design. Quite a heavy book in terms of the ideas, though the writing is wonderfully simple and straightforward. But aren't the clearest minds with the most elegant and terse prose, the hardest to comprehend? Simply a brilliant book that is a must read, and replete with a wonderfully diverse reference list at the end.

Reading this book is like taking a little journey, and credit for this goes to the wonderful writing style and brilliant sequencing of narratives by the writer. The book at a basic level aims to explore the close interplay of humanity and four different botanical elements, and attempts to show the influence that this interplay has had on the flow of history.

Starting with the tale of Johnny Appleseed set in a languorous backdrop, the book slowly edges forward to the tale of the Tulip ... set in the backdrop of a Europe that was beginning to emerge as a major sea-faring continent with amazing adventurers. The book then makes a silent detour into the taboo plant of Marijuana (for the serious/ex- users of weed, the descriptions of the experiences and the scientific analysis of the subject is ...simply Mind Blowing). Following this section and having set the reader on a contemplative path, the book now races to a climactic finish with a brilliant discussion on the issues regarding genetically modified crops and their socio-econo-political consequences.

MP is a writer par excellence, and this makes the book a wonderful read. The book is almost like a little rivulet, that goes on to become a roaring river, which calms down on its final leg to the sea... and then merges with the vast ocean that is limitless and boundless. And while doing so, MP touches subjects as diverse as history, geography, politics, economics and of course... botany!

LS is quite revolutionary in his ideas and thinking, and complements this with an excellent writing style that puts him perhaps, somewhere in the league of writers such as Will Durant, those rare species of people gifted with the ability to convert history into an engrossing tale.

Where LS differs though, and significantly, is that he becomes an active observer of history, viewing it through the lenses of an idea, the idea itself being that the spread of alphabetic literacy amongst peoples has always resulted in a decline of the rights and status of women. Sounds bold? This is perhaps the lesser of controversial statements he makes, and the book races from ancient Sumerian civilizations to the present day, with numerous bold hypotheses and interpretations of facts available. Credit goes to the author for frequently pointing out his hypotheses by terms such as "I would like to propose that...", and the reader will come across yet another startling viewpoint backed by selected examples. In fact some of LS's viewpoints are so outrageously unconventional, that ones' own defense mechanism of 'credibility' kicks in, and refuses to question beliefs we hold so dear and true.

But therein lies the power of this book, and it arises from the brilliant story-telling which makes the book extremely difficult to put down, once begun. A quick view of the References at the end of the book shows clearly that LS has found his facts in not just feminist literature, but even textbooks and classics such as "The structure of Myth", by Claude Levi-Strauss. The reader needn't agree with LS throughout the book, but the book's brilliance lies in showing the ability and scope needed to reinterpret history with powerful eloquence, and LS succeeds well at that.

Not recommended for people with strong religious beliefs. Highly recommended for readers interested in history, feminism and for non-conventional thinkers, to name a few!!

This book is a definitive introduction to the issues surrounding our living in the ecosystem we call the Earth. It brings into focus, lesser known facts about the other components of this ecosystem, specifically our Flora and Fauna. It shows the various uses that these elements are, to mankind and hence underscores their importance to us as a species. The book is very well written and runs like a story, full of examples and narratives, and is a book that makes a good preliminary to Wilson's book - Biophilia

Having said all the above, this book also has some 'shortcomings', I use the word cautiously... to illustrate that these are not negatives, but rather choices exercised by the author. Wilson himself admits that this book focuses on Micro Fauna largely, and hence the case of conservation he builds up is specific to these; he doesn't really speak much about large animals except perhaps the Whale and Rhino. This book is neither too complex nor very elaborate in its examples nor too in depth in its subjects, if you're already familiar with conservation programs and their arguments, you wouldn't find much new material here... but for a lay person interested in knowing what the entire environment-movement is about, this is an excellent place to start.

Lastly, Wilson uses the method of economics to assign value to our ecosystem, thus aiming to beat the 'utilitarians' at their own game, which is one approach to conservationism. Renowned conservationists such as Richard Leakey though do not compeletely agree with this approach, and take a more moral approach to conversation. A brilliant book by Leakey on this subject needs mentioning - "The sixth extinction", which presents the alternative approach to Conservationism. Taken together, these books make an un-challengable case for us to do our part to make our world a better place for our future.

There are a number of things I wish someone told me before I picked up this book, and here are some of them. This is NOT a book about the mathematics or the science behind the creation of the Calendar and the process of measuring time. Rather it is a long winded and one sided rambling history of the creation of the Gregorian Calendar in its present form. The book is too heavily European centric and Christian centric. It relegates all other histories of the measurement of time, such as the Mayans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Arabic etc to at most a chapter each. Further, the entire book is about the impact of the Church on the creation of the Calendar due to the need to fix Easter, and gives amiss to factors such as sea navigation, intercultural trade links etc, which were just as critical in the search for a universal time. Instead these are treated as anecdotes to illustrate the problems of a non-universal time, more as effects of changes made by the Church, rather than socio-cultural causes that led to the need for a Calendar.

In addition to all the above, the writing style makes the book a true chore to read. Filled with names, dates, names of towns and references to texts, paragraphs become extremely overloaded with junk information for anyone except the scholar interested in making chronological research notes. The other aspect that makes plain reading difficult is the frequently occurring capitals and years within paranthesis. A sample paragraph, picked almost at random is below.

"The bull itself was written in the fall of 1581, mostly by Pedro Chacon. On 20th October 1581 , he sent a draft from Turino to Cardinal Sirleto in Rome. Chacon then died a few days later, leaving the final version of the bull to be written by member Vincenzo di Lauri. Sirleto also dispatched Antionio Lilius, Aloysius's brother, to work with the pope's aides on the final bull at Mondragone, Gregory's favorite villa outside of Rome "

The good part of the book is that for someone unexposed to the frailties of time-measurement, this is definitely an eye opener in showing how recent the phenomenon of a universal time is. But even in the book being a non-scientific exposition, it falls far short of its own blurb which proudly announces the decision by Mao Zedong to accept the Gregorian Calendar as a seminal event, one which is treated in its entirety in a couple of paragraphs as compared to the entire book about the habits of monks and the "Ecclesiastical history of the English".Worth a read, not a buy though.