Book Review : The Ascent of Money

I got hold of The Ascent of Money recently from a friend and as many would already know, it’s a marvelous book. More than anything it shows how a study of the past enables one to understand the present so much better.

The writing is simple and at the same time very educating. Harvard must be a great place to be studying, what with professors like Niall Ferguson.

The book also clarifies an important point about why it is reasonable that bankers or other people in the financial industry make so much money without doing anything real, like say manufacturing.

History is always interesting but what I loved most about the book was the correlation it explained between workings of the financial world and biological evolution. It clarified my beliefs on markets being the ultimate judge of quality of products and companies and best practices.

Excellent read, this one!

The Argumentative Indian - first essay

I started with Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian recently, have finished the first essay and this is a review of that. A general observation : his writing is like classical music, you have to pay a lot of attention and appreciate it as it flows down your senses and you fully grasp the author’s intent. A little different and very enjoyable.

Ok about the first essay, the book derives its name from the first essay itself, it too is titled : The Argumentative Indian. In this essay Sen explores the deep routed tradition of discussion, arguments and basically loads of talking in the Indian ethos. He gives a lot of historical examples, right from the Mahabharatha and Ramayana to Akbar’s court of nine jewels. Historic traditions of debating and reasoning are also presented as one of the pillars of our tolerance of diversity and richness of culture. Sen also points out that argumentativeness cuts across gender and caste biases which were very much present in the historical Indian society. He gives examples from the Vedas, Upanishads and other ancient Indian texts. The example of Bhagwad Geeta which is a discussion between Arjun and Lord Krishna is also highlighted.

Our culture of reason, arguments and discussions is also thought to be the source of tolerance to heterodoxy and our significant advances in Mathematics and Sciences in the ancient India. Even the very existence of God is questioned in none less than The Rig Veda itself. To quote a line from the essay, (which quotes it from an english translation of The Rig Veda) :

Creation Hymn :

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen -perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it didnot - the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows - or perhaps he doesn’t know

This is an example of questioning even the most basic of religious beliefs (that of the very existence of God) in a religious book of the stature of The Rig Veda.

The first essay is full of such examples and makes for very sound reading. Amartya Sen has done a pretty good job, at least in his opening essay of the book. Lets see whats in store ahead. I can’t wait to find out !

Cheers !

Vikram

Stay Hungry..

I bought this book by Rashmi Bansal a few days ago. Loved it. It has 25 chapters about 25 IIM A grads who are doing their own thing. Yes, thats the best way to describe it, doing their own thing. One of them is actually not an entreprenur per se , meaning he is an employee, with a nominal ownership stake like many of us, but he does his own thing.

In all 25 chapters their are remarkable similarities and yet stark differences. The advice to young entrepreneurs section after each chapter is quite enlightening. But again, contradictory points are made from one such section to another.

I have not decided which is my favorite chapter as yet (we don’t decide favorites we just know them, well sometimes we do).

Also there are certain patterns to which a certain group of people adhere to and the others have something else of their own. This post is just a signal that I have finished the book and soon the pattern matching analysis will be posted here. So watch this space.

Am reading this, this and also this now. Yes I have read the last one before (like everybody else) but this has pictures and everything of the important things and the user experience is markedly different, also a friend was kind enough to lend it to me, so there you go.

So I am finally in the elite league of people who read multiple books at once. Yay ! Took me long enough, but I got there finally !