Recommendations

Recommendations :

January – March 2011

Book : “Gandhi and Churchill -- the Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age” by Arthur Herman. Two strong-willed persons. Each person, in his own way, held the opinion that he was right. Although there were few direct “face-offs” between them, their choices had a strong influence on the British Empire in its last few decades. It isn’t true that they were always correct in their prognostications.b They suffered significant failures. Each had his own faults.

Movie : “The King’s Speech”. A engrossing movie. Not only about a prince unsure about his position but also touching on rules of behaviour amongst the royalty and, occasionally, on how they were aware of how important it was to lead the nation.

Movie : “Inside Job” A documentary on the financial collapse of 2008, beginning with possible root causes.

September – December 2010

Book : “What Is Your Dangerous Idea ?” edited by John Brockman. A collection of notes on the unthinkable and unacceptable ?

Book : “Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar ... – understanding Philosophy through jokes” by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klien. A mirthful walk through philosophy.

June – August 2010

Book : “The Value of Nothing” by Raj Patel. Patel examines the concepts of cost and value in modern economics – i.e. in “capitalism” and demonstrates how and why the current system is counter-productive for us. “Externalities” (costs that people have to bear, even when they are not producers or in the supply chain) are particularly vicious.

Book : “Lost in Transmission” by Jonathan Harley. Harley was a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation based in South Asia in the late nineties and early 2000s. His tales of his journalist duties in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal are insightful, humorous and touching.

Movie : “Agantuk” (a Bengali Movie). Utpal Dutt was one of my favourite actors even though he was not a “star” in the Hindi film world. In this movie he plays the role of a man bitten by “wanderloost” since his youth who has become an unknown to his only remaining family member.

March – May 2010

Book : “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins covers the issue of Religion from various angles – how and why humans can distinguish between good and evil, why we have a need for a God and a Religion, religious conflict etc. I may not agree with him that evolution explains everything and there is no extra-ordinary force beyond nature – I still leave room for the possibility of there being some “Creator” somewhere, only that I do not follow the general line that “He” is all-knowing and all-caring. Yet, the book is an eye opener – some things are explained, questions are raised. Even if you are a believer, you wouldn’t lose by reading this book (and not agreeing with it).

Book : “Inspite of the Gods” by Edward Luce. A review of modern India and, possibly, how it has developed.

Movie : “The Dead Poets Society”. A group of boys as Prep school learning about life and the freedom to make personal choices.

February 2010

Book : “The Professional” by Subroto Bagchi. A person is a professional not by academic qualifications and training but someone who can work unsupervised and able to certify the completion of his work. Mr Bagchi walks through the qualities and attributes a true professional must possess.

Movie : “The Kite Runner”. I haven’t read the book but the movie was compelling.

Movie : “My Name is Khan” (Hindi). The trials of an autistic Muslim.

Movie : “Up In the Air”. How does management “let go” of employees ? And what do “road warriors” think of people who “stay put” ?

January 2010

Book : “The Dog Allusion” by Martin Rowson. Rowson starts off with a description of a form of human activity/devotion that ascribes extra-human attributes to beings other than humans – viz pets. However, can the same be extended to our fascination with Gods – aka “Religion” ? He traces the course of religion across history and finds that humans tend to need some “external” reference, a way to tell stories and explain things. He is an atheist but does not put himself in the camp of the “rationalist” – he is, rather, a “humanist”. This is, therefore, a book that is different from “The God Delusion”, as he disagrees with Richard Dawkins, a rationalist and empiricist. (Disclaimer : I haven’t read “The God Delusion” yet, finding the volume to be far to weighty (in the literal sense !) everytime I pick up a copy. I do intend to attempt to read it).

Movie : “Good Night, and Good Luck”. A powerful movie about a TV crew that takes on Senator McCarthy during an era when paranoia about communism was very strong and it was easy to cast doubts on those who asked questions – hey wasn’t that behaviour, too, like that of “The Evil Empire” ?

October - December 2009

Movie : “The Hurt Locker”. A US Army Bomb Disposal Squad in Iraq. Who is a friend and who is an enemy in an alien country ?

Movie : “Capitalism : A Love Story”. Michael Moore with another movie about make-belief.

Movie : “Mumbai Meri Jaan”. How do Mumbaikars react to terrorism in their midst ?

Movie : “Luck By Chance”. “There comes a tide …”, but what if you are insincere and not very honest ?

Movie : “3 Idiots”. Not the same as the book. The movie is better than the book. Much better. The book wasn’t worth a complete read.

Movie : “Avatar” . Sorry to say this : Boring. I nodded off for a while. The movie just meanders and isn’t worth watching after the first 30-40minutes.

May - September 2009

Movie : “The Runaway Jury”. Suspensful thriller.

Movie : “District 9”. How one “more powerful” race treats another, “less fortunate”.

Movie : “Inglourious Basterds”. Fictional events during WW-II. (what irked me was the attitude of some (“young adults”) in the audience who found the scene of a man willing to reveal secrets when he faces a terrifying death. I don’t know what was so funny. We were supposed to empathise with him. Far too many times in recent years, I have heard moviegoers laughing at scenes of terror and death. Are these young men ready to face life ? Or do they play computer simulations of life and death ?)

Movie : “Slumdog Millionaire”. Lively tale.

March - April 2009

Movie : “Gran Torino”. Clint Eastwood plays a grumpy old man suspicious of his Asian neighbours. After his wife’s death he has to get to understand them better.

Movie : “Firaaq”. People attempting to returning to normalcy, but bearing the scars of the post-Godhra riots.

Book : “The Canon – The Beautiful Basics of Science” by Natalie Angier. A very readable and lively introduction to the Sciences, for those of us who weren’t fortunate enough to study the subjects at post-secondary education.

January - February 2009

Movie : "Defiance". A true story of group of families surviving in harsh times.

Movie : "Valkyrie". Not only is it about the last attempt to assassinate Hitler but it is also about how people may commit themselves to a course of action without having obtained sufficient prior knowledge.

August - September 2008

Book : "747 -- Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation" by Joe Sutter. Joe Sutter led the team of engineers that designed the highly successful Boeing 747.

Book : "Dreaming in Code" by Scott Rosenberg. The trials and tribulations of a software development project. Particularly read the chapters "Methods" and "Engineers and Artists".

July 2008

Book : "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein

Book : "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets" by George Soros

Book : "Bad Samaritans -- The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & The Threat To Global Prosperity" by Ha-Joon Chang.

Read all 3 of these books to understand "Capitalism" as it is today !

May - June 2008

Book : "The Demon In The Freezer" by Richard Preston. A terrifying description of viruses, experiments in biological warfare and the sceptre of such warfare or terrorism really occurring.

Book : "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. I'd always avoided buying the book on the grounds that I wouldn't find the adventures of a boy and a tiger on a life-boat very engrossing. However, when I read the book, it was the first half -- Pi Patel's life before his fateful journey -- which interested me more. The young boy's knowledge about animals that he gained from his father and his questions about God.

Book : "The Last King of Scotland" by Giles Foden. I'd seen the movie last year and decided to read the book when it was re-released. {As is becoming the usual thing nowadays, we see the movie before we have even heard of the book !}.

Book : "The Secret History of the American Empire" by John Perkins. Another book about the American corporates and governments going hand-in-hand in conspiracy against foreign leaders / peoples.

Book : "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets" by George Soros. Soros is very critical of the the theory of equilibrium, the concept of "perfect competition" and "market fundamentalism" which is what he calls Ronald Regan's "magic of the marketplace". Soros proposes a Theory of Reflexivity -- every participant takes decisions based on his *perception* (not "perfect knowledge") about the market and the prices and his actions cause a feedback loop. Sometimes this causes a virtuous circle but, more often than not, results in a vicious circle feeding on itself with participants working on perception rather than knowledge. If you read this book, I suggest that you also read the first few chapters of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine".

April 2008

Book : "Beyond The Age Of Innocence" by Kishore Mahbubani. An insightful analysis of America's relations with the rest of the world.

March 2008

Movie : "There Will Be Blood". A tale of an ambitious oilman with some quirks. A person who has a short temper, wants quick success and likes making enemies.

Movie : "Charlie Wilson's War". Although it is humorous it does make some significant points, particularly about he short-term idealism of the Americans.

Book : "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Actually this is a negative recommendation. I hadn't read this book since I purchased it. When I did start reading it, I was impressed in the Introduction and the first two chapters. However, from the next chapter onwards I found myself thinking that the authors were making some gross errors. Steven Levitt seems to have, more from anecdotal evidence than statistics, formed opinions about certain neighbourhoods and types of people and used those assumptions as his conclusions about the causes of crime.

February 2008

Movie : "Gandhi, My Father". Not all great fathers have great sons. Some sons are unable to meet their father's expectations.

January 2008

Movie : "Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi". 1969, 1973. Marxism, Bihar, Emergency. Enthusiastic University Students.

Movie : "Michael Clayton". George Clooney in another "different" role.

Book : "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury. Another of the classics which I hadn't read for years. This short novel was first published in 1950 and is still as readable about the near future -- about social changes. Different from George Orwell's "1984" but probably more impressive, certainly more readable.

November /December 2007

Movies : 'Rendition" and "Lions for Lambs". Looking at the "War on Terror" from different angles. Also "In the Valley of Ellah". A soldier returns from Iraq and disappears soon after. His father discovers how he had changed as a person while soldiering in Iraq.

October 2007

Book : "five point someone" by Chetan Bhagat. A supposedly fictional account of life at IIT Delhi for three students.

Book : "The Guide" by R. K. Narayan. I've finally read this book. Didn't see it in stores frequently. Raju, the son of a small shopkeeper does not study at school but becomes worldly wise through his career -- from shop owner to tour guide to promoter and agent.

September 2007

Movie : "Sicko" Another Michael Moore movie. He asks why is it that America doesn't universal health care and has lower life expectancy and higher child mortality than other Western nations.

Book : "Fooled by Randomness. The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. About how we, generally, do not consider probability in our lives -- whether as traders of financial instruments or in other facets of life. Normally, we evaluate our options quickly with limited knowledge -- we might be using "shortcuts" or mere "induction" -- but we forget to factor the role of chance. The author asserts that although there are very many successful people and successful organisations, some of they are successful by sheer serendipity. If you don't read the whole book, just read the "Postcript : Three Afterthoughts in the Shower" . You would then go back to the beginning and start reading the book again. Note : If you have heard of The Black Swan (and that forms the title of his latest book "The Black Swan : The Impact of the Highly Improbable", which I haven't read yet), he says that it is actually from David Hume's "Treatise on Human Nature" and rephrased as the famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill : "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion." In life, we forget or are not even aware of the probability of the occurrence of a black swan. If you have been successfully using a technique for the past 5 years, you may not even consider the possibility that something or someone might come along one day and "break" your technique.

August 2007

Book : "Traders Guns & Money" by Satyajit Das. Satyajit Das uses Rumsfeld's well known "Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns" to describe the many facets of derivatives trading. It is a zero sum game -- if some one makes money in derivatives, some one, somewhere else in the world has lost money. He writes about derivatives traders, bankers, back-office staff and clients -- those who really do not know what they are buying into when they sign the deals.

May 2007

Book : "A Tale Of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. I had read "Oliver Twist" and "A Christmas Carol" in my earlier years. This time I got hold of a an abridged version of "A Tale Of Two Cities" in the Children's / Young People's section of the library. I was able to finish it in a few hours. Not only does the writing convey the cruelty of the "aristocrats" of France before the French Revolution it also does present the bestiality that can come over a mob when it is led by persons bent on vengeance. Time and again wars whether of Independence or Conquest or Revolution remind us that as a "species" we can sometimes descend to being worse than animals -- inspite of our Moral and Civil codes.

April 2007

Movie : "Fracture" . A young, ambitious prosecutor in a hurry to be successful faces up to a calm and calculating criminal.

February 2007

Movie : "Blood Diamond". Not just about the illegal export of diamonds from Sierra Leone (to finance a civil war) but also about the exploitation of children -- about child soldiers.

Movie : "The Last King of Scotland". Fiction woven into what is known about Idi Amin. How an usurper who wanted to be independent of the world powers later turned into a despot and a megalomaniac. Shades of such a character were also visible in The Interpreter [see December 2006, below]

January 2007

Article : "God v Science" from Time Magazine. I do not agree with the title, I would have preferred "God and Science". Read the discussion between Francis Collins and Richard Dawkins. They discuss whether there is a God and whether or how God (ie His being outside of nature's laws) be explained. If you skip the first two pages, do read from page 3 onwards.

December 2006

Books : "Hitler's Peace" by Philip Kerr. This is actually a work of fiction -- "alternative history". The book is based on the events leading to the Big Three [Rooselvelt, Churchill and Stalin] Conference at Teheran in 1943. Possibly, Germany had already begun attempts at negotiating peace with these countries.

However, what interested me were the narratives about the murder [4,000 says Philip Kerr, 4,000 to 5,000 says CNN, estimates of 1,800 to 28,000 say other sources on the Internet, eg Reference.com] of Polish PoWs by the Soviets in 1940. The German army found evidence and the Polish Government in exile broke of relations with the Soviets and called for an international investigation. Apparently, the Americans and British still wanted to co-operate with the Soviets. With the end of the war, it was the Soviet Union forces that occupied Poland. Similarly, at Camp Beketovka, tens of thousands of German PoWs perished at the hands of their Soviet captors.

We hear and read so much about the Holocaust. The Holocaust cannot be denied. But what cannot be denied, too, is American and British complicity with the Soviets when they decided to "look the other way" during the Second World War. That sowed the seeds for the formation of the Iron Curtain and the suppression of Eastern Europe.

Movies : "The Interpreter". No, this is not the story of an innocent UN interpreter. It is the story of corruption -- how power corrupts a leader. It is the story of an African nation that has gained independence with great hope and faith in its leader. Unfortunately, within two decades it is his power that corrupts him.

Movies : “Kabul Express”. Don't watch it as a Hindi movie. Go to see it as a movie about war. This movie has approached the topic differently from “Three Kings” [see my Recommendations in January 2002]. You come away thinking “How do you define who the enemy is ? When does someone/group/nation become an enemy ?”.

September 2006

Movies : "Mad City"[Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta]. Making a national news spectacle of the actions of one man. A movie about the media.

Movies : "Lage Raho Munna Bhai"{Hindi movie}. Gandhigiri in modern times.

August 2006

Movies : "Syriana". The collusion betwen the Oil Industry and Governments. Two oustanding scenes : 1. When Robert Barnes,CIA Agent [played by George Clooney] is introduced to the "Committee for the Liberation of Iran". You should see the look [deadpan] on his face. 2. When Danny Dalton, an oilman and a member of the CLI, talks about corruption : "... We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. ....Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.".

July 2006

Books : "The Chequebook And The Cruise Missile". Conversations with Arundhati Roy, Interviews by David Barsamian. Ms Roy, in her own words, "insist[s] on the right to be emotional, to be sentimental, to be passionate". She is very critical of economic globalization, of democracy and the media being manipulated and not averse to criticising even the Supreme Court or the Indian Government. She talks of the NBA [Narmada Bachao Andolan], the Supreme Court, India and Pakistan, terrorism [including state-sponsored terrorism] and a host of subjects. She is one gutsy lady. I have extracted some quotes here.

Books : "When Genius Failed"by Roger Lowenstein. On the rise and fall of Long-Term Capital Management. The last two chapters are truly "story-telling journalism at it's best". The number of banks getting involved, the repeated attempts to get investors (Warren Buffet and George Soros, among others) to step in, how banks agreed and disagreed frequently, make for stirring reading. However, the arrogance of the LTCM team, their overwhelming confidence in a mathematical "system"that they had been using for only a few years [and hadn't proven itself through business and market cycles] begs the question "what were the banks doing ?". The banks wanted LTCM business because other banks were getting LTCM business. Not enough risk management, poor controls on the part of banks ?

June 2006

Books : "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. "Economic Hit Men are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and muder. They play a game as old as Empire but one that has taken on terrrifying dimensions during this time of globalisation. .. John Perkins .. was an economic hit man for an international consulting firm that worked to convince poorer countries to accept enormous development loans - and to make sure that such projects were contracted to U.S companies. Once these companies were saddled with huge debts, the American government would request their "pound of flesh" in favours, including access to natural resources, military cooperation and political support". Perkins classifies three kinds of methods of modern Empire building, (a) EHMs ("economic hit men") who act as "consultants" to bodies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and then, with their favourable "economic projections" encourage developing countries to take on huge liabilities [some of which are also leaked out in corruption] which cannot be repaid -- thus making these countries indebted to the US ; (b) Jackals who are sent in to assassinate Presidents and Political Leaders that refuse to cooperate with the Empire builders ; (c) the Army , when EHMs and Jackals fail.

May 2006

Books : "An End To Evil" by David Frum and Richard Perle. Sometimes known as neo-cons, these are members of the clique that is behind Bush's leadership [they disparagingly reject the "neo-con"label]. The authors are critical of the State Dept and the CIA in the handling of Iraq and would have favoured Ahmed Chalabi. They think that critics are too quick to point at failures in Iraq and bring up Europe after the Second World War or after the fall of Communism as examples of when the aftermath of war or a major upheaval in leadership were "messy" as well. As for the US role in the Middle East, they do bring up some history lessons and assert that the US has not been very involved. In fact it was England and France that had greater participation in the region particularly after the Second World War. After Iraq, the authors see Iran and North Korea as the greatest governmental threats to the US. In their opinion, the US does have the right to defend itself.

For all those who, like me, have been critical of the US actions since the terrorist attacks on 11-Sep-2001, this book might be worth a read, if only to understand the position of this particular group of persons. Now, maybe, I am not so critical of them.

In fact, as Condoleeza Rice mentioned a few months ago, many mistakes were made but in the long run ("strategic") what the US has forged ahead to do will only be for the better of humanity Maybe we should go back and learn more about the rebuilding of Germany, the rest of Europe and Japan after the Second World War. If Afghanistan and Iraq [and Iran and North Korea ?] and the War on Terror are to be as effective as the Marshall Plan was, these would take decades to be visible changes for the better.

March 2006

Movies :"Rang De Basanti" (Hindi) and "Crash"."Rang De Basanti" is about having something to live and die for, being passionate about something. "Crash" is not just about racism, bigotry and racial stereotyping. It is also about love , faith and innocence.

Books : “Running Money”by Andy Kessler. Andy Kesslerran a Hedge Fund investing in tech stocks for 5 years which he closed as the boom was turning into a bust in 2001. Ostensibly about Hedge Funds, I find the vignettes about technologies and tech companies more interesting.

January 2006

Books :“How to Dunk a Doughnut” by Len Fisher. An excellent collection of articles bringing science/mathematics into everyday life. Don't forget to read the notes to the chapters as well.

July 2005

Books : "Origins of the Crash" by Roger Lowenstein. Mr Lowenstein analyses the different angles of the optimistic late-90s and early years of this century – from Stock Options, CEO Pay, the New Economy, Financial [mis]Management and to the roles of CEOs, Boards and Auditors (even Lawyers), Bankers and Analysts and the Investors. He begins with a short chapter laying the path from the 1970s towards the almost universal acceptance of the credo of“shareholder value” in the late 1990s [yes, even I studied this concept from American textbooks on Financial Management at University] and towards how it biased all the participants. The Dot-Coms, Enron, WorldCom and the Telecom companies are also detailed. Let me quote from his Epilogue chapter [and I agree with him] :
“The speculation was epochal, the abuse of investors was pervasive, and the fraud was more widespread than at any time under the present system of federal regulations. It was not merely that many companies, or many Wall Street operations, misbehaved ; it was that the very culture encouraged the misbehaviour and was, in large measure, its accomplice.”
“.. What gave the period its special license was the credo of shareholder value, a philosophical approach designed to pull America out of its previous period of malaise. During the '90s, .. the credo was widely adopted, its meang was increasingly distorted. It became a maxim not for enhancing business values, a process that occurs only over years, but for enhancing day-by-day quotations of shares, a far more ephemeral thing. Virtually every transgression flowed from this simple corruption.”

Mr Lowenstein, however, ends on an optimistic note quite obviously hoping that the controls initiated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the sight of CEOs being publicly handcuffed and being sentenced to prison will restore higher standards. On that, I would just opine that he is being optimistic. He does find that Boards have not yet gained wisdom with respect to executive compensation [he quotes the compensation to Sandy Weill of Citigroup while I would like to point out the handsome compensations being given to Morgan Stanley executives who have been leaving the organisation in the past few months], that the CEOs still seem to be quite powerful and that audit rules “remain far too vulnerable to trickery and obfuscation” [to which I would add that the Auditors are yet to prove that they can be independent].

June 2005

Books : "FIASCO" by Frank Partnoy. Frank Partnoy was a Derivatives Salesman at Morgan Stanley in the mid-90s. The book is an attempt by the author to reveal how Derivatives and sold – sold to innocent investors who really do not understand the instruments they buy and “get their faces ripped off”. Orange County, P&G and Barings have also been included. Partnoy's last few months at Morgan Stanley were in Japan in 1995. As he got increasingly disillusioned, he realised that what he had been doing was fundamentally wrong; he simply couldn't take it any more. Reading the book, it makes one wonder if investment bankers really have no qualms about indulging in what seem to be questionable tactics to make the most money out of ill-informed investors in the quickest manner.

March 2005

Books : "Confessions of a Street Addict" by Jim Cramer. After having read Nicholas Maier's description of his career at Cramer &Co [later Cramer & Berkowitz], I had to read Cramer's story. Jim Cramer [who still appears on CNBC Squak Box] comes across as a person who loves making money, a person who is passionate about the markets and a person who cannot stand losses. In fact, Cramer's book show much more maturity than Maier's writings.

Books : "Rogue Nation" by Clyde Prestowitz. No, he is not talking of Iraq or North Korea but U.S.A. The book is sub-titled 'American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions'. It is a careful analysis of America's attitude toward the rest of the world -- be it in military domination, globalisation or the promotion of democracy. Besides covering the unilateral disdain for global treaties, Prestowitz recounts various examples of how U.S.A has taken a "holier than thou" attitude or actually taken sides all over the world [Palestine-Israel, the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and it's behaviour in Iran, Iraq, China, Japan, Latin America etc].

February 2005

Books : "Trading With The Enemy" by Nicholas W. Maier. "This is a true insider's story --- an honest, raw, page-turning account that takes us on a journey through the volatile world of hedge funds." Maier joined Cramer & Co [later Cramer &Berkowitz], in 1994 and left in 1999. Jim Cramer was one of the leading traders on Wall Street, till he left in 2000, to take charge of TheStreet.com that he had founded jointly with Marty Peretz. This book is about the years till 2000 and how Cramer repeatedly asserted "We are at war. .. Everyone out there is the enemy", not placing too much trust in any company, broker, journalist while racking up huge returns trading in stocks, options and futures. Caution : You will see repeated used of the "F"word attributed to Cramer in this book. Also, I would advice you to try to read the other side of the story -- a quick google search turned up a few references to Nicholas Maier feeding information to the SEC, Harper Collins withdrawing copies of the book or deleting pages about an SEC inquiry about trades in Western Digital, the issues of "WavePhore" which Cramer is alleged to have short-sold etc. I haven't been able to get "You Got Screwed" and "Confessions of a Street Addict"both of which were written by Cramer after Maier's book came out. However, I have reserved a copy of the latter at the nearest library here.

This is a good follow up read to the older "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis and seems to be much more controversial. "Liar's Poker" was about the rise of Salomon Brothers but is dated now as it was written in 1990.Thus, while "Liar's Poker" is a more humorous book about Bond Traders at Salomon Brothers through the 80's, "Trading With the Enemy" is more forceful about Equities [stocks, options, futures] Traders at Cramer & Berkowitz through the mid 90's.

December 2004 / January 2005

Books : "The Third World War"by Humphrey Hawksley. This is, truly, a terrifying novel. It combines Islamic terrorism with Pakistan and North Korea and Nuclear Weapons and Biological Weapons. The timeframe is somewhat post-Iraq / post-Musharraf. The book also does offer some insights into how countries sometimes react to situations and why they do act or remain passive {eg why does China not push Pakistan to curb terrorists in Kashmir}. Hawksleyis a BBC correspondent familiar with South, East and South East Asia.

September/October 2004

Movies : Tom Hanks plays a charismatic simpleton in"The Terminal". This is a movie which juxtapositions being a human with being a bureaucrat.

July/August 2004

Movies : I wouldn't have missed Michael Moore's"Fahrenheit 9/11" !! The documentary is interesting. Some criticism has been that some of the quotes and scenes have been taken "out of context". True. Yet, for anyone who has followed the U.S. Presidential elections, the terrorist attacks of 09-Sep-01, allegations about oil money and connections, Afghanistan and Iraq, the "contexts"are quite relevant. Again, another criticism is that George W. Bush sometimes looks like a buffoon. I agree that there seems to have been an exaggerated attempt to convey the idea that he may not have been thinking through the possibilities on the morning of the terrorist activities. The three things that struck me more than how he looks in the film are a) how the U.S. Presidential Elections were actually "lost", b) the allegations about bin Laden and Saudi and Oil connections in the top echelons of the U.S. Government and c) more important is that innocent Iraqis lost their lives then the fact that U.S. soldiers died in a foreign country fighting for ".. for what ?".

I guess that I will spend some time going through Michael Moore's website.

Another notable movie that I saw recently was "The Day After Tomorrow".

Books : "Dust" by Charles Pellegrino. "A terrifyingly plausible what-if nightmare" -- James Cameron. The blurb on the cover page says "65 million years agao the dinosaurs vanished off the face of the Earth. Now it is our turn". I find doomsday scenarios intriguing. I had liked the movie "Deep Impact" more than "Armageddon". "The Day After Tomorrow" was also interesting but not gripping but slightly difficult to believe. This book talks of a different possibility. Did comets kill the dinosaurs and other species ? Or was there another cause working at the same time as well ? What explains the periodic mass-extinctions [not just the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but others before and after them as well] that the planet has witnessed ? I have frequently wondered if man really would be the last intelligent species on this planet. The movie "Evolution"provided some, uh ... food for thought, let's say.

March 2004

Movies : Some good movies that I have seen in recent months include "Minority Report", "Identity","Changing Lanes" and"The Butterfly Effect". These make you think "What if ...... ?"

January 2004

Book : "Why Do People Hate America ?" by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davis. Published in the UK in 2002 by Icon Books Ltd. You may not agree with everything the authors say, you may be taken aback by the occassional vehemence of their words, but it is a different look at America. It considers how the USA behaves with the rest of the world and how USA views the world. The core thread is that while America is all for exporting its corporations and its culture, it remains insular and does not take to influences from the rest of the world, with Americans not having opened their minds to the rest of the world.