***/*****                                                                                                                                                           Biography The Undoing Project-A Friendship that Changed the World Michael Lewis Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman formed one of the most productive and seamless partnerships in the history of science. They had such opposing personalities that it’s little short of a miracle that they collaborated for more than forty years and gave world a completely new view of the decision-making apparatus of human mind. Amos was supremely self-assured, exuberantly gregarious and the centre of attention in any gathering. He loved to engage people in lively discussions where he dominated because of his boundless knowledge, sharp intellect and lucid articulation. Daniel, Danny to his friends, was an introvert, riddled with self-doubts. He perpetually imagined himself failing in any endeavour that he undertook, avoided conversation

****/*****                                                                                                                                                         Adventure Kon-Tiki: Across The Pacific By Raft Thor Heyerdahl This is an amazing story of a voyage from Peru to Polynesia in a primitive raft. The voyage was conceptualised by Thor Heyerdahl and his friends and it took place in 1947. Thor Heyerdahl is a zoologist and an amateur ethnologist. His passion is Polynesian islands and before this voyage he once stayed on a south sea island, Fatu Hiva for a year, cut off from the world. He had gone there to study how animals had originated/migrated to these islands, but came back with a controversial theory of how man came to inhabit them. Till then historians believed that earliest settlers to these islands came from South East Asia. But Heyerdahl believed that first man came to these islands from Peru in South America. It is a common folk lore on these islands that

**** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                                     Science THINKING FAST AND SLOW DANIEL KAHNEMAN We like to believe that humans are rational beings. We believe our minds are machines which accurately analyse a situation in light of given facts and the available knowledge, before arriving at conclusions and future course of action. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics and a psychologist by profession informs us that nothing is further from truth. In this forceful book he tells us about the science of decision making, especially in uncertain situations. He draws on the latest developments in evolutionary and cognitive psychology and mainly on the extensive work he and his late colleague Amos Tversky did in this field for decades. In the initial pages he introduces us to the two systems, the Fast & the Slow, as he calls them, that drive human

**** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                                                    Travel Notes From a Small Island Bill Bryson                 Let me caution future readers of this book. Do not read it in public. Contemplate for a few seconds this scenario. A person breaks out in loud boisterous laughs every few minutes while reading a book, he starts beating his tummy in mirth and almost rolls down his chair. He stands up laughing and then bends down holding his aching sides. This and more will befall you as you read this book. This is the funniest book I have read.                 Bill Bryson lived in Britain for almost two decades when he decided to move to his native country America. But before leaving this island nation he decided to take a trip around Britain in public transports to discover why he loves this country so much, what is it that makes it so special in the

****/*****                                                                                                                                                         Novel The Honorary Consul Graham Greene This is another masterly crafted novel of Graham Greene situated in the quintessentially Greene country; a bleak, neglected countryside in North Argentina. The un-named town on the south bank of the great river Parana is notable for its extreme dullness and staid existence, to the extent that the brothel of Senora Sanchez seems like an epitome of cultural innovation. Across the river, on its north bank lies Paraguay, ruled by a brutal dictator. Unsuccessful but persistent rebellion against him by the intrepid, though professionally immature, communist revolutionaries makes the country a dangerous land. The southern dreary city is home to just three British citizens; Doctor Plarr, Doctor Humphries and Charley Fortnum. Doctor Eduardo Plarr, the central character of the novel

***/*****                                                                                                                                    Novel A House for Mr Biswas V.S. Naipaul Mr Biswas, born six fingered, and in the wrong way, has been cursed that he would eat up his mother and father. This book is the life story of Mr Biswas, from his birth to his death. He is born in penury, without a firm roof over his head. All his life he strives to make two ends meet, and to acquire a proper house that he can call his own. This is also Naipaul’s first book that achieved immense fame and critical acclaim. It is considered one of the great novels of twentieth century and also Naipaul’s magnum opus. It is a very big book, six hundred pages in all. A novel of this length, dealing with the life of one individual, here Mr Biswas, is a detailed chronicle of such life. Mr Biswas, born to poor parents struggled all his life to acquire material possessions for a dignified life.