My 2020 in Books

I picked up this book because of multiple reasons. First and foremost, as an avid coffee fan (but not at all a connoisseur) who tries out different ways of making coffee and exploring various varieties of it, I always wanted to learn Starbucks' take on innovation in coffee. Secondly, I knew this was the story of a turnaround, and a mighty impressive one at that given Starbucks has rebounded from its 2008 woes pretty solidly. Reading the stories of bouncing backs are always much more captivating than those of hagiography!

And in regards to that, the book not only didn't disappoint, it even overdid it. Literally, the very last chapter of the book is the only chapter in which the author and the Starbucks legend (and a legendary CEO in his own right) Howard Schultz talks about the success story. The rest of the book is about how it went through a series of rough phases starting in 2007, and how a lot of measures taken in positive spirit by the founder-CEO promptly backfired. Howard Schultz has been humble and honest enough in the book to accept his tactical mistakes and strategic blunders, and that's a rare quality.  The title of the book "Onward" apparently is the signature of Howard Schultz.

There are some amazing lessons to learn from some of the incidents that transformed Starbucks around 2007-2008. The meticulous attention given to the smell of burnt cheese off breakfast sandwiches so the shop always smells of aromatic coffee, innovating via the reverse French Press - the Clover machine, Michelle Gass' story of taking Frappuccino from nothing to 2 billion, the ingenious voting ad (free coffee if you vote), the super creative "MyStarbucksIdea.com" story (the hero my previous book Marc Benioff makes a cameo there :)), the unusual Blizzard partnership, the instant coffee and "JAWS (short for Just Add Water and Stir) project, the heart touching story of coffee tasting events for blind in Japan are a few of the interesting stories you could read in the book. The book ends with the story of Starbucks adopting new and improved technology, and their expansion in China. And those two combined invariably reminds me of Luckin Coffee!

The book also gives a great insight about the supply chain of Starbucks coffee, all the way from the soil and coffee plants of Rwanda from where they source their finest Arabica coffee (Starbucks has never used the lower quality and cheaper Robusta coffee even at the heights of recession), to their unique roasting and mixing approaches. I did like many of the quotes of Howard Schultz, but my favorite one has been "Starbucks is not too big to fail. But it's certainly too good to fail".

Overall, I think this is one of the most inspiring books that I have read this year. It teaches through the lessons it learned from its failures. I'd recommend it to two sets of people - avid coffee fans, and entrepreneurs. 

After reading the book, I don't think I can disagree with the title of the book in any way, it certainly has enough material for the seeker to be called a university! Even though the authors of the book are Corey Wrenn and Daniel Pecaut, who admittedly themselves are highly accomplished money managers, the real authors of the book (in quite literal sense) are the wonder-pair of Omaha - Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. University of Berkshire Hathaway is a sensical, abridged version of thirty years of Annual Shareholders Meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. It's by far the closest I've come to reading the summary of the highly engaging and wildly popular shareholders' meeting of BH in a gainful way. 

The book is brimming with advices (albeit not in a pedantic way), anecdotes, cautions, and information in general about a wide away of topics like the earnings of BH itself (obviously), market conditions, economy, reinsurance, Coca-Cola, Geico, "the good investments (Coca Cola, Gillette, Geico), the bad investments (Netjets, airlines), and the ugly investments (Dexter Shoes)", nuclear proliferation, china olympics, CDS, technology, executive compensation, corn ethanol, football, and of course, the rising star of BH Ajit Jain.

The anecdotes of Munger and Buffett are unmatched in their quality and elegance! The repeated urging to "Be Greedy when others are fearful, be fearful when others are greedy"; others like "Inflation is a political phenomenon, not economic", "If investors had to study only the past, all librarians would be billionaires"; and the popular ones like "Buy wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price", and "Gambling is a tax on ignorance" are only a few of the gems mentioned in their shareholders' meetings. Apart from these witty and wise one-liners, there's no dearth of amazing stories and hypothetical thought-experiments. Buffett's "Ovarian Lottery" concept, stories from The Richest Man in Babylon, the concept of Newspaper Standard - 'Behave as if your actions will be on the front page of the national newspaper', Munger's concept of "Enlightened Common Sense" are a few good examples. The best story was about the owner of Nebraska Furniture Mart. When she turned 103, she was asked what's the best thing about turning 103. She said "No peer pressure". But as one can see, because these meetings are annual and there are over thirty of them so far, some of the stories get repeated many times and gives the reader a deja-vu moment.

The book also includes some discussions from Buffett and Munger about their biggest blunders - buying Dexter Shoes (which eventually failed) for 2% of Berkshire Hathaway shares, Munger's blown opportunity at Belridge Oil, Buffett's claim in 1987 that Encyclopedias will be little changed in 20 years from then (clearly, he had not seen the Wikipedia coming) - being a bunch of them. Along with these come a few of the classic BH counter-intuitive but highly profitable advices - "Non-diversification is the key", "Not looking at the market conditions" etc. There's also a ton of praise heaped on potentially the next boss of BH, Ajit Jain. Ajit Jain has been the unquestioned king of Reinsurance division at BH and in fact, Munger goes on to say that BH's single best investment according to him was the fee for the corporate recruiter that hired Ajit Jain! Buffett adds that if there were three of them in a sinking boat and you could only save one, you should save Ajit.

Some light stories about Buffett drinking five Pepsis a day before switching over to Cherry Coke; some intense opinions about value investing (from the lineage of Ben Graham and Ben Franklin), investor temperament, etc; some detailed analysis about the collapse of Lloyd's and its impact on reinsurance industry, how corn ethanol is a stupid idea etc - add even more meat to the book.

To conclude, I'd say the book is not without its drawbacks - many names misquoted like Belrich Oil for Belridge Oil, name of the CEO of Geico was John Byrne not Jack Byrne - page 195 etc. And author has also admitted that the lessons from the book is probably not for the first time investor. And yet, purely because of the credibility of BH and its wonder duo, the book is totally worth reading.

I had huge expectations from this book. At the outset, I found the name - The Ride of a Lifetime - very smart, given the book is about the person who spent all his career at Disney (and its acquisitions). Furthermore, I had seen Bill Gates recommend this book in his GatesNotes, and that was big. The author and former CEO Robert "Bob" Iger was also in the news during the celebrated Marvel acquisition by Disney, so overall there was already a lot of zest inside me about wanting to read this. However, after reading the 200-ish pages of a memoir-like book, I felt it was a bit of let down. I guess I compared it too much with Jack Welch's Winning, and it was nowhere close to that. To be fair, I thought it was an apple-to-apple comparison, given both of them led and turned-around their respective mammoth corporations by being at their helms. 

The book is divided in two parts - pre-Disney and post-Disney. The first part is all about childhood, and the ABC days of Bob. It's interesting but there's nothing much to take away from it. Bob's first job's description - "Show up whenever they needed me, for whatever task." - yet again shows the nature of work most rags-to-riches big shots begin their career with! While most of the first part was bland, some incidents like the penis episode, meeting Sinatra and keeping his lighter forever, securing the North Korean Ping Ping coverage rights make it worth a read. 

The second part was all about Disney! And also the more interesting of the two sections of the book, easily. There were several stories that made me hooked to the book, major ones being that of Twin Peaks, relationship with Steve Jobs, Who Wants to be a Millionaire's revival of ABC, and the acquisition of the Star Wars franchise. As a huge fan of David Lynch and the immensely captivating Twin Peaks, it was fascinating to read about the inside stories of Twin Peaks production. I knew the series lost a lot of charm in the second season and almost everyone felt the director dragged it way too much, but never knew so much was going on behind the scenes - including a bid to fire Lynch. David Lynch wanted "Who killed Laura Palmer?" to be a question forever, but Bob, who was in-charge of ABC's shows wanted it to be answered to the audience. Goes on to show how much of an artist's creativity is diverted in the hands of producers and distributors. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same even today with juggernauts like Netflix, Prime etc. The story of ABC, whose viewership was waning, getting revived by Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is also equally exciting. WWTBAM has probably helped more anchors, hosts, and TV networks than it has its contestants. 

Easily the most notable highlight of the book is Bob's (and Disney's) relationship with Steve Jobs. Steve and Bob's former manager and Disney's previous CEO Michael Eisner had a very bitter relationship, owing to both of their egos. But when Bob took over as CEO, he made an intentional effort to mend terms and it laid the foundation for a solid, lasting relationship between Disney and Pixar, and Steve and Bob themselves. So much that Steve even confided in Bob his medical conditions, his iPod video prototypes and other things which he generally never does with anyone! Steve remained a lifelong friend to Bob.

The book has some amazing quotes for the ambitious minded, some of my favorites being from Bob's previous manager Roone who ran ABC sports - "Find another way" (when something is not working) and "You can't save your way to success". Although the book never comes as preachy, or even as a guide, it still has a lot of pages shining with inspiring tips for anyone that's career oriented, and certainly for the ones looking at the corner office. "Compartmentalize and delegate", "Never start negatively" are two of the most basic ones, yet stressed many times in the book. Bob comes across as another disciplined, one-company-for-life, 4 AM waking CEO, which is typical of many who rise to the top of a big corporation. His dedication to perfection is highlighted by the incident where he shows all members of his team the hugely popular documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about an 80 year old Sushi master widely regarded as an epitome of perfectionism.

I must say that apart from stories of grueling interviews for his CEO job, and stories about betting on and succeeding with  Blackpanther, the second half of the book is just all about Disney's acquisitions. There is a chapter titled "Innovate or Die" and I was so curious to read it, only to be let down by the fact that for Bob, innovation probably meant just strategic acquisitions, as the entire chapter was all about Hulu acquisition, ESPN 360, acquiring BAMTech, then Fox, then Disney+ from BAMTech, then the Star Wars franchise, and the list goes on. The book could also be named "List of Disney's Acquisitions and fascinating stories behind them". 

Overall, I was slightly disappointed by the book, but still would recommend it for any non-fiction fan solely for its riveting behind-the-scenes stories narrated from a great vantage point by a person who's seen it all.

I had put off reading this book prioritizing a few others, until I realized that its author is William Taylor, the founder of Fast Company! I promptly put it back at the top of my reading-list, as I a devout reader of the innovation-centric reporting at the Fast Company. The book, without much surprise, thus read like a set of long, discrete stories with a connected theme. Although the examples given tell many a tales, the overall theme is undoubtedly the titular one - of being Simply Brilliant.

The book is not about our regular usual suspects, although, the moment I read its tagline - "How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things In Extraordinary Ways", I knew Zappos had to be there, and it was. But what was interesting was there were tons of Zappos-like cultural and strategic stories from companies I had never heard of, making me add so many things to my "to-Google" list! As a true believer in the s-type ('s' for strategies) innovation as categorized by Safu Bahcall in his famous work Loonshots, as opposed to just the p-type (p for product), I enjoyed the stories of little innovative strategies and ideas improvised and implemented in various firms of a diverse set of industries and size.

The incredible "no-layoff" policy established and maintained by Lincoln Electric, to the marvelous customer-first strategy of USAA serving its active and retired military customers, to extreme importance given to employee understanding of mission in the form of pop-quizzes and trainings at Pal's Sudden Service, to the ever joyous Drive-thru bank at Metro Bank that throws happy vibes at its customers unlike any ambiance  you'd have seen at most banks, to the astonishing turnaround story of Megabus through a series of innovative strategies - the book is brimming with impressive stories of positive changes in a company, owing to their unique policies and/or approaches. 

While programs like DaSH by Mercedes to improve their eNPS score, Holacracy concept by Zappos, USAA's topping Forgiveness Index forever and a day, Pret A Manger's unique way of giving out free sandwiches to customers at employees' discretion, Fastenel's slow-and-steady yet unmatched growth to become the best stock traded since the crash of 87 - are sure stories that are wildly striking, the two most stimulating examples of the book, in my personal opinion, were the radical shift on looking at the healthcare system at the Nuka Care System in Anchorage, which changed the concept of "going to the doctor" as something one would do when sick to something that's integrated into part of one's life, and of the Goldcorp Challenge, where the CEO of Goldcorp, a Canadian gold exploration firm, Rob McEwen opened the proprietary information of gold deposits and asked the nerds from all over the world to help them optimize the drilling activity! These two were exceptionally unique and mind-blowing, and could easily become the next set of case-studies of HBR :-).

Overall, this is a splendidly enjoyable book for anyone that's a fan of new ideas, innovation, and of unique strategies that drive growth! Not very different from reading Fast Magazine itself though. 

After the last book I read - 'The Universe in you Hand' re-kindled my inner craving to get fascinated by the marvels of Quantum Dynamics, I couldn't not pick a "text book" kind of book loaded with equations, linear algebra, partial differentials, and of course integrals of all kind that would let me understand the mathematical basis of the fascinating concepts of Quantum Theory. I know a lot of purists don't necessarily think Griffiths's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics is the best of the text books out there, and I agree with them, in that this is probably not as comprehensive and formal, not as mathematically heavy as R.Sankar. BUT, after reading this completely, I was glad I chose this because for someone doing self-study, R.Sankar or JJ Sakurai tend to be very heavy, sometimes even intimidating. So, for someone like me, who was going from something like 'The Universe in your Hand' that was very generic/basic, to get to the basics of the derivation of time independent Schrodinger's equation, I needed an intermediary. And this book was the perfect fit there.

The first two pages of the book that mention all the relevant equations and constants was the first impressive thing in the book for me, as I don't know how many times I have hovered over that page by now! Other than that however, the book tends to become informal in a lot of places, maybe that's intentional, and sometimes reads like a novel (and I'm not a huge fan of that). It doesn't have any chapters dedicated to getting you up to speed with linear algebra, vectors, tensors etc, so I believe that's a prerequisite. The flow and organization of the book is impressive, easy to follow, and is coherent. Unfortunately, it doesn't use Bra-Ket notation everywhere so it gets frustrating sometimes. Chapter 12, simply titled Afterword, turned out to be my favorite chapter, despite having minimal number of equations, as it spoke about the most captivating topics of Quantum theory like EPR paradox, Bell's inequality etc.

I didn't do any of the exercise problems, which unfortunately, made me miss out on a lot of interesting problems. Other than that, I'd say I now have a decent idea of the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics (although not to the extent of using that on a Quantum processor to write Shore's algorithm). I think I'm ready to pick-up something advanced, either R.Shankar or Pauling.

However much I try to distract myself away from them, problems like the collapse of the waveform, Bell's inequality and its sheer simplicity, light's wave-particle duality, entanglement and that spooky action at a distance, hidden local variables, quantum eraser etc never cease to amaze me. And I guess the next book on this should let me brew my own concoction of ideas on these.

Post reading this book, I realized it had a bit of everything - biography of arguably the first geekess/nerdess in modern history, the very origins of programming - the big-bang of programming 'if' you will 'for' it literally gave rise to if conditions and for loops of our era, the emotional rollercoaster of a short-lived life, the intimate and intricate relationships between people whose lives we just take for granted as flashy, and not at all the least, a bunch of trivia you'd not find in a GK book. I enjoyed reading the book way more than I had thought.

The book, as the title "Dreaming In Code" should have revealed, is about Lady Augusta Ada Lovelace, widely considered as the first programmer, and known to the world as a collaborator of Babbage in building Analytical Engine, the first ever "computer". But it's also about, in fact more so about, Ada's relationship with her mother, the strictest of moms, Lady Byron. And also about the fame and infamy of her father, Lord Byron himself, the very fact being kept hidden from her until she was a teenager. The book is well categorized into parts that tell stories of Ada's birth, her complicated relationship with her mother, her interests and beginning of nerdiness, her collaboration with Babbage and eventual fall-apart, her married life and children, and eventually, at an early age in thirties, her downfall - debt, gambling, clarite, laudanum, and continued hostility from her mother even in deathbed, and finally very a painful death.

The book begins with an aptly put line - "Born in an era that considered women's minds unequipped for serious business". It's tragic this was the case back then, and worse that the same opinion unfortunately is still prevalent in some shape or form even today!!

Some of the fascinating trivia I collected from this gem of a book is that the first branching (if else) and first loops (for, while) were implemented by Ada in Analytical Engine, the first even algorithm in its modern sense was written to calculate Bernoulli numbers, arguably one of the the first quines in a way was creating a portrait of Jacquard woven from Jacquard punch cards, while Ada and Babbage were pioneering computing tech, her father Lord Byron was in fact the champion of Luddites, and the fact that Analytical Engine had an automation of tic-tac-toe!

The book also efficiently captures some of the mind-blowing quirks of Ada - her "Flyology", her signing as "Yours Puzzle-pate", being one of the first ones to see numbers as generic "symbols" thereby triggering the idea that Analytical Engine could do much more than what a calculator can do, her concept of aerial mail delivery etc. But the most interesting of all was that she wanted to invent the "Calculus of Nervous Systems", a sort of "Laws for Mental Activity" thereby becoming (in her own words) Newton of Molecular Universe.

The book very delicately captures a bunch of complex relationships, between Ada, her mom Annabelle Byron, and father Lord Byron; between Ada and Babbage (when they first met, Babbage was actually trying to charm Ada's mom); between Ada and her loving husband William; and between Ada and her affair with her psychologist. Everything about her death was very painful to read, except for the fact that when she was on her deathbed, she called for her close friend Charles Dickens, who immediately came and read her excerpts from her favorite novel of his, Dombey and Son.

Overall, the book was a great read and I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested in knowing about the life and times of a real geek!

The Business of Being, is not philosophical like the classic "Being and Nothingness", nor is it about your classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People" kind of business-self-help book, but is a perfect blend of both ideas that helps one fine-tune the personal mission at workplace, taking cues from the ideas of running a business. This is made very obvious from the fact that almost all chapters being with the line "For a moment, think of yourself as a business". Exactly, the book is about how we could treat our personal mission oriented towards a better career, happier future, career and/or financial growth etc just like how big companies and start-ups treat their company missions and visions.

The main reason I picked this book up is because I'm big fan of having personal values and plans, like a business or a firm does - for finance, growth, networking etc. So, the intrinsic idea in the book appealed to me.

The author has made it interesting to read the book by brilliantly binding two different, yet relatable stories like fine intertwined threads. The book swings between the two concepts - one of 'thinking ourselves as a business' and the other of starting a restaurant in France called La Mandarine Bleue. And there are a dozen recipes as well, really!

The book introduced me to some interesting concepts like Ikigai, the Japanese concept of having 'a reason for being', the amazing Ocean Medallion technology (which I tried so hard to find a use-case for in smart co-working industry), Google BrandLab, Naikon or the Japanese concept of 'introspection' etc.

There are a few boring zen stories in between, but many other real life inspiring stories, like that of the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl makes up for the 'interesting quotient' of the book.

Overall, this is a decent read, where it doesn't come too hard as a pedantic self-help book, nor does it get overly philosophical at any point.

Obviously, there was a lot of expectation into reading this book because of the legacy set by the author with his first book Sapiens, and I'd say neither did this book disappoint nor did it come across as a great match to its predecessor. Obviously, the book is a well-researched, detail oriented, thought provoking, intellectually stimulating work of nonfiction, but somewhere it lacked the captivating element Sapiens had. Despite that, there is a treasure of information for the seeker to know and a plethora of ideas to think about.

Very simply, the book is about how humans reached the current level of supremacy, and what's in store for them in future, for the new human species - Homo Deus. The book is categorized into several sections, and a majority of the first half talks more about the history (and evolution) than on the future. It's only at the very end of the book does it start discussing such revolutionary ideas like trans-humanism and dataism.

The book is teeming with fascinating information about a variety of things related to evolution, working of the human brain, and psychology of humans. Humans being anthropocene following Animalism (I was dearly surprised at the mentioning of the Nayaka community from Karnataka in that regard!); the way neurons fire to create simulations; story about how Turing Test came to be in the gay clubs of 1950s London; the crazy rat-robo experiments by Dr.Sanjiv Talwar; the mindblowing cell-in-a-cell monkey experiment; the story of Clever Hans and its amazing ability at understanding human emotions by observing their faces; the story of the instantaneous fall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu; the craziness of the multiple demonitization of their currency by Myanmar based on the emperor's wishes; Souza Mendes and his extraordinary work of stamping visas to save Jews from the holocaust; the history behind the rectangles of the African map; the intriguing story of bats loaning blood to their buddies without any interest; Google's contact lens in collaboration with Novartis to find out glucose level from tears; etc are just a small subset of engrossing stories you'd get to read in the book.

Argument and ideas-wise, the one that struck me was that fact that the author successfully checkmated me about my extremely materialistic no-mind-just-brain theory by asking a very coherent question - if everything is just electrochemical reactions in the brain, and there's no subjective experience in them, how would one not consider torture as suffering through? Now, that's a great argument for the mind-body problem.

In the ending sections of the book, the author talks about a lot on how algorithms are taking over human decision making skills, let alone processing abilities, by citing examples like AlphaGo, Mindojo, MatterInsight's human emotion project, the algorithm of Waze, the insane story of the algorithm named VITAL that was added to the board of an investment firm (you read it right), which in-turn showed the signs of nepotism by recommending more algorithms to invest on, EMI music, Bedpost band, and obviously the unmissable Watson. 

Overall, I'd say I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and happy with the content, although I feel it still did miss something that Sapiens had.

"Insanely Delightful" would be a good title for the review of this book, which, although far from perfect, tells the story of the Steve Jobs era Apple primarily from an advertising perspective. The story of Steve Jobs is like a universe of its own, with ample scope for a series of gripping, pocketed stories that could be captivating on their own merit but share the underlying theme - the hippie days, the two Steves, the pirates, Sculley and Amelio, NeXT, iProducts, Apple Store, Pixar, Pancreas, Lisa etc, and this book is about one such story focussed on innovation at Apple seen through the prism of advertising, marketing, and creative art. I chose the word 'prism' and not 'lens' because there are instances in the book where events are glorified, deliberately or not, and where certain failures have been ignored until the conclusion section. 

Before exploring the details of the book further, I want to point out a few things about the author, so the context will be set up better for the rest of the journey. Ken Segall is an advertising veteran, having been mostly with Chiat/Day (one of the most famous advertising agencies that has created landmark ads like Taco Bell chihuahua, Adidas's Hello Tomorrow, Southwest's Welcome Aboard etc along with three of the best campaigns ever for Apple - 1984, Mac vs PC, and the iconic "Think Different) for much of his career and closely linked with their Apple account. He was the protege of Steve Hayden, the creator of 1984. In that position, his interactions with Steve Jobs were first hand, and so is his account in this book. But clearly, and even admittedly, Ken was enamored by Steve's Reality Distortion Field, and on most pages in the book, he comes across as a fanboy rather than a collaborator! That's not a complaint per se, but something that becomes apparent clearly and dearly in the book. 

The book has been divided into ten chapters, each very smartly named on the lines of "Think something" - Think Small, Think Simple, Think Iconic etc. And I certainly admit that all of them apply unarguably to Apple and the values lived by it under Steve Jobs. Every chapter is about the author's interactions with Steve Jobs (I say Steve Jobs because it was Steve Jobs himself who used to handle the final advertising, marketing, and product naming campaigns - not some executives, not a board, not anybody else) on an advertising or a marketing project. The stories are not chronological but are rather categorized on different aspects of simplicity. Before we narrow down on each chapter, as a trivia fan, I'd like to put down some interesting "Did you know?"s from the book that might pique a potential reader's interest to explore more. Did you know that...

1. Before they called it iMac, which further led to the naming of many iconic iProducts, the name they had chosen was "Mac Man"? I'm glad Steve listened to Chiat in this case,

2. Cisco originally had the trademark for the name iPhone and was in fact a product in use? Apple was in talks about it but Steve went ahead with his magnum opus presentation at the 2007 iPhone launch and announced it anyway without permission,

3. The iconic quote that goes "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels..." was not Steve's but that of Chiat, but Steve did contribute one line as a writer - "They push the human race forward"?

4. When the "Think Different" campaign was in full swing with many extremely famous personalities, game changers were being part of it, Steve really wanted Nelson Mandela to be part of it? When Chiat failed to get Mandela, Steve spoke to Bill Clinton (Steve was very close to Clintons) to talk to Mandela on Apple's behalf! Mandela rejected nevertheless, and Apple went with Charlie Chaplin. 

5. Once, Steve wanted to introduce two versions of Mac, a paid update and a free update, and the free update would contain ads on boot-up, software launch, searches etc?! Thankfully for Apple, Steve went against it for the advertising nightmare it would create. And thankfully for the world, that model never got traction by anyone else, even on mobile.

The first chapter is called "Think Brutal", and in this, the author narrates the stories associated with Steve's legendary "Simple Stick" - an imaginary magic wand that makes a complex system simple. Simple Stick killing the idea of two  different packaging of a single product is the simplest example of this. The chapter also includes stories about how meetings were conducted in Jobs era Apple, by eliminating the least required person! By "brutal", the author means brutally honest, which Steve indeed was, and "that" in reality is a very simple thing to practice. In "Think Small", the author narrates how Steve's idea of thinking small set Apple apart from its competitors like Intel and Dell. "Small" includes a wide variety of smalls, including having a small number of choices. The author rightly points out how Apple makes it so simple to browse their products by categorizing them appropriately, while its competitors drown in the paradox of choice. The chapter logically transforms well into its next - Think Minimal, which follows the same line but for processes. "Think Motion", the next chapter is more about Microsoft than Apple, where Microsoft searches for its core values and from the marketing perspective, end up choosing kids, puppies, and small businesses as their target! 

My favorite chapter in the book is "Think Iconic" which rightly points out how simplicity is "embedded" in anything iconic! From the ad of 1984, to Think Different campaign, to iMac to iPhone, Apple's iconic products/campaigns have displayed extreme simplicity in their appeal. It doesn't mean the effort that went into making them iconic was simple, on contrary it's brutally demanding, but when the product is out, its simplicity speaks for itself. The story of iPhone's one "Home Button" is particularly enjoyable in this regard. Arguably unrelated, but the story of how Apple didn't get into the trouble of solving the Y2K problem is part of this chapter, and I was truly amazed to know that roughly $600 billion was spent on it by the industry outside of Apple according to Gartner. 

"Think Human" is a beautifully narrated piece which highlights how Apple always sees its end users as humans and talks to them about values and ease of use, rather than with numbers and data as done by a majority of their competitors. I was a bit skeptical at first, but the author completely quenched it by highlighting what Apple told about their iPod - "A thousand songs in your pocket". I don't think any data, any number would have conveyed the message clearer. It doesn't matter how long those songs are, what quality and thus what size each is etc, the end-user is perfectly happy to know that the device can fit around a thousand standard songs, and that the device itself can fit in his pocket. This chapter also contains the most iconic Apple quote ever - "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels...", but I'll save it to the end. There's an entire chapter dedicated to the lawyers of Apple and the ad agency, titled aptly "Think Skeptic", and one dedicated to the advertising wars Apple waged on Microsoft and Intel at various times - "Think War".  Both of these are brimming with captivating tales on how Apple went against its competition.

All through the book, I kept wondering why the author conveniently skipped the failures of Apple and of Steve that didn't fit the line of this narration. That bit was disappointing, but there's a modicum of solace in "Conclusion" (sigh, at least) where many of Apple's notable failures (and of NeXT) have been documented. Too late, too little, but at least it's there.

Overall, this was an enthralling read. The more I read about Steve, the more I realize he had so many facets that are not captured in his mainstream stories. So, this book from an advertising angle was very informative and certainly enjoyable. I'll conclude this by quoting the most famous line Chiat has ever created, something that gives me goosebumps every time I read it: "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. You can quote them, glorify them, vilify them. But you can't ignore them. Because, they change things. Because, the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

I've been engaged with my own, personal, small-scale sleep experiments for a long time. Almost a decade ago, I created this weird alarm clock called "Sense Alarm", that leverages the power of your other senses, not just your sense of hearing, to wake you up - http://anoopdixith.com/sensealarm/. But I have never been able to dissect the internals of sleep in a more scientific way, although forever and a day I wished I could. So, what better way to learn more about sleep and a gazillion other sleep experiments than from Dr. Matthew Walker, who has been studying sleep for over thirty years and has written over a hundred research papers on the topic? For the interested ones, his website is aptly titled sleepdiplomat.com. The author has also been a sleep consultant for NBA and NFL teams, military etc, for all those who thought this isn't a lucrative business. The book turned out to be a captivating read as expected, neither hardcore technical like a textbook nor shallow like a popular science book. And I ended up taking more notes than probably any other book I have read this year. 

The book is very logically divided into four segments, each dealing with a unique aspect of sleep - its importance, its effects, its abnormalities like insomnia, somnambulism, narcolepsy, sleeping-aids etc, and social aspects of sleep. I think the author has done a tremendous job squeezing in every aspect of this universal, ultra important, metabolic activity - jet-lags, caffeine, sleep with aging, sleeping pills, light-heavy gadgets, sleep deprivation in US medical residents (about which I've first hand experience), Alzheimer's, negative impact of the snooze in alarm clocks etc. But we definitely need to give a special shout out to the last chapter - "Vision for 21st century" where the author tries to offer solutions to the contemporary sleep problems in the society at the individual, business, education, and societal levels. I must acknowledge that many solutions proposed are indeed considerable and sufficing, if not revolutionary. And just like all the matters of sleep, with time, even minor improvements applied consistently make a colossal positive difference. The book also does a marvelous job of theorizing something and then backing it up with a plethora of experimental results, and many of the theories are the author's very own, which is by far the best you could get out of a nonfiction book.

As far as the content of the book goes, even after reading the entire book, or maybe even after going over a hundred scholarly papers on it, if you ask me to answer in a line why we sleep, I wouldn't be able to. The book doesn't either. It's definitely a longer answer. But that's because like most things related to the brain, sleep, which is in fact mostly related to the brain more than any other activity like breathing, motory skills etc, is just a very elusive topic that is still very much under active research. But like the author puts it, it has to be an ultra important  process and would be considered "evolution's biggest blunder if it has no use". Following are some of the main points distilled from the book -

1. All organisms sleep - there's no organism with a nervous system found yet that doesn't sleep. That probably means sleep was developed very early in evolution, and couldn't possibly have no direct or indirect impact

2. Not just animals, but plants also have circadian rhythm, that operates independently of its solar exposure

3. Being a night owl or a morning lark is genetic. It's in our genes to wake up early or go to bed late. Evolution made it that way so, as a tribe with both kind of animals, humans could be awake for a longer span overall to protect ourselves from predators

4. Repeated experiments have proven that the human circadian cycle is 24 hours 15 mins, although the stellar day is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds long. The flexibility in this is still unanswered. 

5. Adenosine build-up and the circadian rhythm together causes sleep, not just any one of them like it's widely thought. Caffeine helps you stay awake by fighting adenosine. Basically binding to neuroreceptors that adenosine was supposed to bind to, thereby rendering adenosine molecules powerless. And without that, you don't feel the sensation of sleeping. A super interesting spider-web experiment reveals how dangerous caffeine is. Spiders were made to build their webs after bringing them separately under the influence of alcohol, heroin, a hallucinogen, and caffeine. The spider with caffeine had spawned the most erratic web.

6. There are two types of sleeps - Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and no REM sleep. REM sleep is where you dream. A night's sleep is multiple 90 minute on average cycles of these two. Experimentally, it has been proved that during NREM sleep, memory is transferred from the hippocampus (short term memory) to cortex (long term memory). And experimental results also show that REM sleep dreaming aids in soothing emotional concerns by suppressing noradrenaline (the only time noradrenaline is not synthesized in your body is when you're dreaming) and increasing creativity by establishing wide, non-obvious neural connections. 

7. Some organisms have split brain sleep. These are generally aquatic organisms, and they always need a part of their brain to keep them afloat and keep an eye on predators in the ocean. 

8. One of the evolutionary masterpieces is the disabling of the muscle action (muscle paralysis) during REM sleep, so any motor action as played out in your dream is not enacted. This is truly remarkable!

9. Highly technically speaking, it's not "time that heals". A variety of experiments show that it's in fact REM sleep dreaming of the relevant emotions that heal things. The author was also able to achieve a modest success in PTSD treatment using this hypothesis.

10. Interesting observations in dreams have resulted in many phenomenal inventions and theories, the most famous of them being - the periodic table of elements was conceptualized by Mendelev in his sleep, the neural connectionless connection using synapses was conceptualized by Otto Loewi in his sleep, Frankenstein was ideated by Mary Shelley in her dream, Kekule's day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail resulted in finding structure of benzene etc. But the other truly ingenious experiment on dreams was by Edison (well, who else?). Edison used to have steel bearings in his hand and go to sleep on an arm-chair. When the REM-sleep dreaming starts, the muscles relax making him release the balls! 

11. After his seminal work on DNA structure and its ensuing Nobel, Crick worked on REM sleep dreaming! But much like Einstein's failed Grand Unified Theory, his theories on sleep couldn't succeed.

12. Alarm clocks are bad for cardiovascular health, but what is worse is the snooze button, Multiple snooze is cumulatively worse, causing havoc on your heart. So, do away with them and wake up once your alarm hits, at worst.

13. RAND Corporation's financial study on the "Lack of Sleep in employees" estimated that the lack of sleep costs the US a whopping $411 billion a year. 

14. Two of the world's most disastrous man-made events - Chernobyl and Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska - both had a sleep deprived worker behind them. 

15. The Guinness Book of World Records doesn't let you set any record for sleep deprivation. It's that lethal. While Google has nap-pads and NASA promotes scientifically calibrated sleep-hygiene for its astronauts, the insurance company Aetna goes a step forward offering bonus for verified sound sleeping. Talk about corporate responsibility! 

There are obviously a lot more interesting conclusions in the book other than the ones mentioned above. My favorite takeaway is that it does make sense to set an alarm for bedtime, just like your morning alarm. In fact, it's probably more important. I'm going to implement it from tonight and see how it works. Overall, the book was an enlightening read and probably one of the few books that doesn't take it personally when you fall asleep while reading it. 

As a staunch reader of philosophical treatises (both Western and Eastern, and classical and modern), Ethics by Baruch Spinoza lurked in my to-read list for longer than I'd thought. I finally finished it with almost fifty pages of rough note-taking, digesting mind-numbing proofs of its myriad propositions, and a gratified sense of content! Clearly, this was a way easier read (and a more logically followable one) than many other magna opera of the philosophical world like Being and Nothingness, Phenomenology of Spirit, or even Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy for that matter. But if you thought the treatise is all about "moral ethics", going by the name, as it would probably translate to in the modern sense of the word, you couldn't be farther off. In fact, the full name of the book is "Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order", and is full of axioms, propositions based on those axioms, demonstrations of those propositions - each one built on top of an already proved entity. If you're a fan of Geometrical proofs, you'd certainly enjoy the way this book has delightfully used them to prove hard philosophical questions. (Including things like what is love and hate, emotions etc).

Quite obviously, and like many other works of that era (17th century), the book tries to answer a lot of questions about God, mind-body duality etc. For a materialist like me, neither is of much interest, but that's not relevant as the main purpose of studying this treatise is to get the principles used to answer those questions and then use the same to answer questions that are relevant to me, and in the current day and place. However, I do have my objections and a set of errata to a lot of propositions and their demonstrations. 

The book is divided into predictable sections of axioms, propositions, and the demonstration of those propositions either from axioms or through already proved propositions. Axioms are very easy to follow, and some of them are core to the general foundation of rationality. So much so that some axioms about causality are being studied and endorsed by Einstein. "A true idea must agree with that of which it is the idea", "The knowledge of an effect depends upon and involves the knowledge of the cause", "Man Thinks" are a few examples of axioms mentioned in the book. Numerous propositions are built using one or more of these as the foundation. I also found "definitions" of certain things unusual yet sensical. For example, Spinoza describes Joy as "a man's passage from a less to a greater perfection", and sorrow as "his passage from a greater to less perfection". Hatred, according to Spinoza is "sorrow with accompanying idea of an external cause" ('sorrow' in this definition is defined as previously stated). The one I liked the most due to its unusual angle is the definition of Devotion - "Love towards an object that astonishes us". I do have my concerns, and in some places strong opposite opinions but that's for a different article of criticism.

A lot of propositions are also very delightful to follow, and pleasing to internalize, like "If two things are nothing in common, then one cannot be the cause of the other", "If we imagine that we are beloved by a person without having given any cause for the love, we shall love him in return" etc. Note that these are propositions, and thus are proved immediately following them on the basis of axioms or already established propositions. 

The most interesting part of the book, for me, is the proposition where Spinoza proves the "existence of God". The proposition goes like this: "God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists". I tried my best to go back to all his axioms and propositions to prove this, but failed. Or partially succeeded (which could as well be because it's actually wrong). His proof, by contradiction, is pretty simple though. He says, "if the postulate be denied (that is if it's assumed that God doesn't exist), then it follows that his essence does not involve existence. (Axiom 7 - Essence of that thing which can be conceived as not existing does not involve existence.) But this is absurd according to Proposition 7 (Proposition 7 -  It pertains to the nature of substance to exist. Here, a "substance" is defined as that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself. In other words, the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing from which it must be formed). Putting all these back together, and coming bottom-up, substance is like an independent entity - whose conception does not depend on any other thing. And it pertains to the nature of such a substance to "exist" (as opposed to not exist). That's because there's nothing by which substance can be produced, so it will be the cause of itself). Now, if a "substance" exists, stands to reason that essence of that thing which can be conceived as existing involves existence. This God (or substance) exists! I did like the alternate proof that Spinoza gives - that if God doesn't exist, there must be a reason or cause that hinders the existence or which negates it. And this reason or cause must either be contained in the nature of the thing or lie outside it. Now, if the reason is contained in the nature of the thing, we already admitted that God exists. And if the reason or cause lies outside, it violates a Proposition 2 that states "two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another". Thus, there's no reason for God to not exist! I tried my best to "mathematicize" these axioms and propositions as sets, but given the fluid nature of many proofs, I couldn't come full circle! 

In any case, with over hundred such postulates, about practically all aspects of philosophy - God, Nature and its Origin, Emotions, Intellect etc, the book keeps your rationality and logical connection making skills on toes. And if you're that kind of person, according to my first postulate, you should be able to enjoy reading this book :)