Book Recommendations (Q1, 2024)
5 books to open your mind
Hello there,
Reading books is one of the greatest pleasures of life. Nothing produces as much satisfaction as sitting down with a great read…except maybe that moment when you get a bumper 3 Rs reward via your UPI app scratch card.
Long-time readers of the newsletter know that I keep publishing these lists (almost) every quarter. Here’s the last one I wrote.
I’ll also publish a separate fiction list (the world fiction recommendations list was quite popular).
Today, we’ll focus on 5 mind-expanding reads that’ll make you look at the world differently. Here’s the good stuff:
Chip War: As the AI wars heat up, we’re reminded that a semiconductor- the stuff that powers all those AI chips (which, in turn, cause NVIDIA stock to shoot up like a meme coin)- is arguably one of the most important technologies of the century. It not only supports AI but all digital products that we use daily. Given the criticality of this thing, you’d be shocked to know that the semiconductor industry is dominated by a handful of players from a few countries- the US, China, Japan, S Korea, the Netherlands, and Taiwan. And with China seeking to go all Aatmanirbhar and ease its dependence on the West for this tech, the world of chips is getting tense and exciting, with various countries duking it out to achieve semiconductor supremacy. Combining tech, history, business & geopolitics, this book tells the story of how it all started and where we are now. It reads like a thriller and I’d rate it 11/10 for the incredible writing. It’s like a wow.
Missing In Action: They say India disappoints both the optimists and the pessimists. Even though we’ve come a long way, we continue to have a “Two steps forward, one step back” approach and create policies that hobble our progress. So what is it that’s ailing our government’s policies, and what can we do better? If you like to think about such questions and want to move past simplistic narratives of how everything’s hunky dory & India will be the best country in the world by 2047, read this book. It’ll educate you on topics where you may have thought differently. Why price controls are harmful, why “protecting local businesses” is bad, how colonial hangover leads to poor govt decisions- you’ll get answers to all these questions and lots more in this thought-provoking read.
Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living: If you enjoyed the recent piece on the logic behind painful rituals, this one’s the perfect pick. The author, armed with his research and numerous entertaining stories, lucidly explains why rituals matter, why we (still) need them, and what value they provide to practitioners, even though from the outside they look like senseless (and even harmful) actions that don’t have any utility. This book will make one question their own biases when it comes to traditional, age-old practices.
Cosmos: Written by the legendary Carl Sagan, this is a book that’ll increase your feeling of awe for the vast and beautiful universe we inhabit. Sagan covers cosmology, the history of the earliest form of science, and even meditates on the existence of extraterrestrial life (article coming up soon). Even though it can get a bit complicated at some points, it was an incredible read that made me want to learn a lot more about our planet, the stars, and our place in this universe.
The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine: Reading this work shocked me. The conventional narrative is that Israel has always been an innocent victim and that the Palestinians are totally in the wrong. Going deep into the origins of the conflict, I realized that not only has the creation of Israel led to almost a century of settler colonialism and endless displacement of Palestinians (there was no ‘Israel’ before 1948, only Palestine), but the Palestinian citizen has got a particularly raw deal in the process. As in most messed-up situations, we find the British culpable for initiating this mess. The Palestinians have had to constantly fight against a violent power (backed by the US) and have been thoroughly dehumanized- treated as if they have no right to exist. This is a hard-hitting read that saddened me quite a bit, even though I’d like to go deeper and read a lot more to get a clearer picture.
That’s it for today, friends. Did you read any books in the last few months that you’d like to recommend? If yes, respond to the email or comment on the web article. I’d love to hear from you and if there are any good ones, I’ll recommend them to the community in the next edition.
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