My Reading List of 2021: History, Science, Memoir and Possibilities
By surfing my reading list and the books I want to read, one can easily guess that I love non-fiction. I chose books to search and answer my inner soul. But more I read, I realize the insatiable nature of our soul. Here are the books I read in 2021. If you are a book lover too, don’t forget to connect with me on Goodreads, will be happy to exchange our opinion and reading list there.
It was the journey of us for last 2300 years through the spine of the Old World, the silk route. The author’s journey started with the conquest of Alexander the Great to the east through Persia to the western border of India and to the south through Levant to the city of Alexandria. In last two millennia, the control of Silk Road changed hands from one emperor to the another. The hostile terrain, challenges to tame and rule local population in foreign land, the luxury goods like silk, precious metals, spices from India & China and the religios movements on either direction changed the power center of the region from one empire to the other. From Macedonia to the rise of Roman Empire, the conflict with Persia, the birth of Christianity and then Islam, the rapid expansion of Islam and subsequent Crusade fueled by the christian Europe, the troublemaker nomads from steppe regions followed by the rise of Ghengis Khan, the greatest and ruthless ruler of the Mongol Empire, the vivid and dramatic narration by author took us through the major events of shaping and reshaping of Central Asia throughout the Antiquity and Middle Ages.
The age of discovery started with the exploration of east and west via sea routes. During renaissance, desperation to gain control of trade with east, the European empires in Spain and Portugal started making long naval explorations. With the common goal to establish sea route to India from different directions, Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama reached their destinations around same time. The discovery of New World and lately black goal(crude oil) in gulf region influenced the history of silk route heavily. We witnessed British colonial empire and the increasing influence of Russia on Balkans and Steppe. The tensions among European nations competing on sea as well as trade routes via central Asia led to two World Wars. The wars turned the table in favor of New World, United States of America. The Cold War is equally fascinating, we saw the jews nation reborn in Arab land by the Mediterranean Sea, the ouster of Shah, the last Persian ruler by Islamic revolution in Iran, The invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet and pullout due to heavy resistance by CIA backed militia fought me that conventional war in new world order is easy to win, but hard to sustain. Ironically, same militia turned the gun against their benefactor in form of unconventional war, “jihad” became “terrorism” with 9/11 strike on mainland America.
I lately discovered history, the story of us, the story of the only planet we made our presence for millennia. Even if it is the series of events and observations of our past, it contains the hidden recipe of our future. The lessons we learn from history is invaluable, With help from history, we evolved from one form of society to another, starting from tribalism to monarchy, then autocracy and lately democracy. The new world order looks more stable than ever before, until we repeat the mistake from our past. A great start of the year with a great book.
More I read, less I know!
“I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift” — Steven Pinker
A fantastic journey between two most complex things known to human so far, the human brain and the Universe. As well known theoretical physicist, the author puts trust more on science and engineering and less on fiction, even though he cited many sci-fi books and movies in the past. I was fascinated by the number of researches and whatever little success in the quest of decoding brain. I was fascinated by many other things, like the three different level of consciousness, the anatomy of brain and how they are interconnected, the pioneers and their vision, The God helmet, the consciousness of robots and aliens. Lastly, the hypothesis of “quantum consciousness” i.e. probabilistic nature of brain split the scientific community right in the middle, bringing back the Schrödinger’s Cat. The epic battle between objective reality and observational reality is still on, decoding 100 billion neurons and their interconnections may create a touring machine which can behave exactly like a human, but can it possess human consciousness if quantum in nature?
I’m aware of my consciousness every moment, so do you with your inquisitive mind. Now I know who to blame(or what part of my brain) for all the questions. I definitely got some of the answers from this book. Unfortunately, this book added more questions to my question back than it answered, so I shall dig down further. The book worth a second read to collect and cite multiple references.
A small nitpick, the author definitely did not foresee the recent effect of coronavirus on human society. If he wrote the book in 2020 or later, he would definitely revise his explanation of Caveman Principle. Overall, a great read for a scientific and inquisitive mind.
The early-life traumatic experience and the subsequent struggle of a holocaust survivor, the author herself. In this memoir, the author took us through her eventful journey and described how her choices shaped her life.
“Most, but not all, of what you read in this book is nonsense.” — Elon
That is Elon for you, but don’t go by his review of this book. The book is a modern day saga of disrupting a century-old industry which started with Henry Ford. When I was often wondering how Silicon Valley could challenge Detroit head on and surpassed all of automobile industries in recent years, this book took me through the long and difficult journey of Tesla in last two decades. I got rid of few other myths I had on Tesla. For example, Tesla was founded way back in 2003, contrary to its recent popularity. The company was not founded by Musk, however, Musk’s stubbornness and visionary pulled the company from the brink of collapse a few times. Their early struggled with unpopular Roadster was a big revelation for me, the same model is making a comeback as the fastest car of the world.
Secondly, Tesla so far is the Elon show. From day one of his investment, he took control and started shaping future of mobility, all-electric vehicle. He managed to bring all the great minds together, laid out the apt product strategy, wooed Wall Street as and when the company needed to raise capital, making tall promises to keep the buzz around the industry, nano-managed the production and even making deals with various government agencies. Even though he got great people like JB Straubel, Peter Rawlinson, Antonio Gracias, Deepak Ahuja and few others in the journey, he reigned supreme with a great vision but often unrealistic expectations. The book depicts the struggle and subsequent achievement in hazard-free battery pack for the cars, the disruption of car dealership with a novel online sales experience, the complete computer-driven control system of automobile with emerging autopilot capability and many other achievements, all with a great deal of involvement from Musk. It also depicts the low points of the company as well as of Musk.
The story of Tesla and future of Electrical Vehicle is far from over. In fact, even after 18 years of hard struggle and numerous successes like Model S & Model 3, Tesla looks as vulnerable as it was 10 years back. As the critics say, with a market capitalization of 800 billion USD, it is grossly overvalued at this point. Even though the Silicon Valley automobile startup achieved the impossible feet of surpassing all the decade old global automakers combined in terms of market capitalization, the cost and viability of all-electric vehicle remains a complex problem while compared to its gas-guzzling cousins.
Lastly, knowing Elon via this book is absolute charm. The book focussed on personal as well as Tesla life of Elon, leaving untouched his other ventures like Spacex, Boring company, Starlink, Neuralink etc. I often wonder how much he dealt with on those areas while dealing with Tesla. His other ventures are as futuristic and as complex, if not more. Dealing with many failures and few great successes definitely made him the toughest guy in the block. He already elevated himself as the superhero, future colonization of Mars will give him an interplanetary stardom in coming decades. As the cult followers say,
My quest of understanding religious psychology and its influence in our society for thousands of years took me to this book, and by far the closest to my quest. Our religiosity deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, the author argued. He cited different studies on chimpanzee and bonobo (closest cousins) to show how ape families form hierarchical structure dominated by alpha males. While the evidence of mail dominance in human societies goes back from Stone Age until the spread of abrahamic religion with despotic rulers, the gift of abstract thinking elected the alpha male to the level of God, the omnipotent alpha male. The author cited many verses and quotes from biblical and quranic scriptures to show how the alpha God rein supreme, need total submission and establish the rule for the believers beyond question. The author also pointed out how such core tenets of religiosity create in-group and out-group mentality within our own. The dehumanization of out-group(the non believers) humans eventually ends up in war like crusade or jihad. The brutality of war and total destruction of out-group or even agnostic population are evident throughout human history.
I did not like overemphasis on the abrahamic religion while establishing the central idea, also overwhelmed with references to biblical and quranic verses. The author touched upon the other dominant regions like Hinduism and Buddhism towards the end, but did not see any attempt to use them in his central argument. After all, those religions predate abrahamic religion and not structured around alpha male (there are some attempts in Hindu scripture of establish God of all Gods). I was waiting to get some perspective, but found none.
Liked the closing note, where authors observed the lesser dominance of alpha male in the less religious societies. He also advocated for scientific approaches and tools to identify and limit our tribal instinct, emphasized on the social equality and women empowerment. He cited the research study in America which found atheists and agnostics possess more religious knowledge than believers and even evangelists, which is eye-opener for me.
This was the last book of the year, leaving you with a quote from the book -
“The more we understand about how and why we humans have the tendency to behave the way we do, the grater our potential will be for moving beyond our current limitations. Strong and protected scientific education is not as widely accessible as it should be. Nor is training in analytic and critical thinking encouraged in many education systems around the world. And yet it is precisely this kind of critical thinking, the urge to question everything, including why the sky is blue and why a God is typically an omnipotent man whose will must be appeased”
