Ed Yong’s masterful journal, I Contain Multitudes happens to be my first microbiology book that I decided to hang out with. And it didn’t let me down, in fact, the book offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of microbes.
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Book Review: The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku
Lately, Dr. Michio Kaku’s book The Future of Humanity caught my attention. The book is uber fascinating and it was difficult to put it down, I finished reading in less than a week. I wasn’t reading, rather I was witnessing the ‘space odyssey’ in Dr. Kaku’s style.
Read MoreBook Review: The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene
The Hidden Reality talks about parallel universes and the deep laws of cosmos by Professor Brian Greene. It has been nominated for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books for 2012.
Read MoreBook Review: Until the End of Time by Brian Greene
This is one of the best books on Existentialism. Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, postulates a reductionist view that after all, we beings of planet Earth are nothing more than a “bag of particles”.
Read MoreBook Review: The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel
As the title suggests, the biography is on the life of the self-taught mathematical prodigy Srinavasa Ramanujan Iyengar, through the lens of Robert Kanigel. Not only the book sheds light on the life and history of Ramanujan but we also get to know the lives of Godfrey Harold Hardy, his mentor in England and his friend John Edensor Littlewood.
Read MoreBook Review: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Although title of the book says Astrophysics for People in a Hurry but believe me the book has more depth than the label interprets. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an epitome of masterly skill at explaining complex scientific concepts into the most elementary and comprehensible manner. He makes astrophysics so interesting that even a person who has no inclination towards the subject will surely gravitate towards the space and evolutionary history after listening to his talks. His enthusiasm is contagious indeed.
Read MoreBook Review: Rapt Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher opens up with William James’s famous quote, “My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind”. This is one of the most powerful lines that I have come across. It’s so simple yet so profound to execute.
Read MoreBook Review: Open An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
J.R. Moehringer did a fantastic job in writing Andre Agassi’s ‘autobiography’, Open: An Autobiography. He gave his best shot again right after his own famous memoir “The Tender Bar”. Deftly, Moehringer slips into telling Agassi’s life on paper as if he had lived it too.
Read MoreBook Review: Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine M Pittman, Elizabeth M Karle
Anxiety is part of our everyday life but chronic anxiety is a type of mental illness. It is neither a temporary problem nor does it get away with medications. It can have serious consequences on health such as depression, mood swings, headache, panic attacks, pounding heart, breathing problems, extreme fatigue, increase in blood pressure and so on.
Read MoreBook Review: The Yoga of Time Travel by Fred Alan Wolf
This weekend I finished reading one of the most remarkable books, The Yoga of Time Travel: How the Mind Can Defeat Time by Fred Alan Wolf. Time travel, a concept has always intrigued me including movies based on the same. This book surpasses every motion picture that I have seen so far. Very deftly, Wolf has woven threads of Vedic philosophy into quantum physics and alternative philosophies like Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
Read MoreBook Review: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Catch 22 is an American post-war novel written by Joseph Heller. It is one of the interesting pieces of American literature juggling dark humor, war issues, bleakness, satire, silliness, wordplay and serious theme. Initially the book looks like a noose of loose strands but as the plot progresses, we find that very deftly, Heller has been able to surface the absurdity of war and the human condition itself. It is a world of madness, where each character fits in perfectly well with his personal streak of eccentricity.
Read MoreBook Review: We the Living by Ayn Rand
“We the Living” is Rand’s first novel and probably amongst the greatest works of nonfiction depicting the life during the Soviet Era, the communist dictatorship in Soviet Russia in 1920s. The motif runs around the struggle of individuals against the totalitarian state.
Read MoreBook Review: The Eternal Nazi by Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet
The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim is written by Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet. It is a semi biographical sketch of SS officer Aribert Heim, a medical doctor by profession and an able ice hockey player. He was serving at Mauthausen during 1941. People who survived the concentration camp reported that he used to take pleasure in operating healthy people without giving them anesthesia. Plus, he decorated his table with skulls of victims and offered the same as gifts to his…
Read MoreA Place Called Freedom by Ken Follett
A Place Called Freedom is Ken Follett’s one of the most absorbing historical novel set around 1770 A.D. Protagonist Malachi (Mack) McAsh right at an early age stands against the tyrannical practice of employing children as miners in Scotland. His desire for freedom above everything else in life sets the underneath motif in the novel. It is the same willingness to be free that makes him a fugitive in the eyes of his master, Sir George Jamisson. After escaping from High Glen, Jamisson’s property, he moves to London. There again he…
Read MoreTotal Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger is an epitome of success and Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story has beautifully put forth his journey from Mr. Olympia to Terminator and finally to Governorship. One of the most striking features of his personality that surfaced from the book is that, he knew what he wanted to do in life right from his young age. At the time when most of the people were struggling for living in war torn Austria, he was visualizing himself as a success story and was busy working persistently towards…
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