Occasionally even a nonfiction book, seizes the fancy of the reading public so magnificently that the author attains the fame of a popstar. Book acquires the reputation of a touchstone, being the ultimate mark of high culture. To acknowledge ignorance about it is to declare your philistine taste in reading, most conspicuously. I have read only few such books. Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens is one such book in recent times. Harari has a way with words and is an innate story-teller. Book reads marvelously smooth. I cannot think of one reason why a person will not enjoy it, unless he finds books themselves repulsive. I was in Afghanistan for fourteen months, beginning Dec 2003, as a member of a medical team, a humanitarian initiative of the Government of India. I remember the cold, bleak, war-ravaged country sheltering some of the most intrepid, lively, friendly and generous people. Memory plays strange games, but I think, I fell in love with the country. On my return I look...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                   History Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari Yuval Noah Harari is a historian. In this epic story of the species Homo Sapiens, he takes up the task of analysing the three principl...

****/*****                                                                                                                         Travel/Memoir An Unexpected Light-Travels In Afghanistan Jason Elliot This is a stirring account of author’s travel in war ravaged Afghanistan, a journey as much across this strange land as into the deep, hitherto unexplored dungeons of his inner self. Jason...

***/*****                                                                                                                                          Novel Less Andrew Sean Greer Arthur Less, a middle-aged homosexual, is a second-rate novelist. In his early twenties he was lover of an acclaimed Pulitzer-winnin...

***/*****                                                                                                             Nonfiction/Science/Life Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Atul Gawande Homo sapiens probably are the only species of animals where individual die of old age, except animals kept in captivity. Animals of other species rarely reach debilitating old age, as long before this they succumb to disease or predation. Nature h...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                      Essay Why I am not a Christian       Bertrand Russell This is a collection of essays by Bertrand Russell. Many of these deal with religion and with issues related to religion. The eponymous essay Why I am not a Christian is one of the finest essay ...

Faiz Ahmad Faiz is in news these days. I came under the spell of Faiz’s poetry about two decades back. I was endlessly thrilled by the unmatched elegance of his language, throbbing imagery of emotions in his sophisticated words and poignancy of human condition expressed with engaging fluidity and with infinite sensitivity in his poetry. I came across Saare Sukhan Hamare , complete collection of his poetry in Devanagari script, around the same time. I read it entranced. Many times over. And continue to derive illimitable pleasure from it till date. Bits of his poetry float in my mind haphazardly. Some time back, I jotted down on a paper, in my words, what Faiz’s poems mean to me. I liked the exercise. It brought me closer to his poetry and gave me much joy. I have persevered with this joyful activity for almost a year now. A few weeks back students at a university sang one of his iconic Nazms, ‘Hum Dekhenge’, during a protest against Citizenship Amendment Act. Religious ...

Darwin took the wind out of the sail of God. If God did not have to create life, what else was he meant for? Desmond and Moore’s biography of Darwin is one of the best biographies I have read. Darwin seems to grow and acquire the features and qualities that we believe he had, and with this grows his science too, in front of our eyes as we proceed with the book. Don’t be dissuaded by book’s girth. If you plan to read one biography of a scientist this year, I urge you to take this up. It won’t disappoint. Iran is in news. Michael Axworthy, a British academic and author, headed Iran section at the British Foreign office once. He has written many books on Iran. I read his book Iran-The Empire of Mind many years back. As I read the review once again now, I realised the book had not impressed me much. I hesitated but then decided to post the review. Let the selection be eclectic in ‘star-rating’ too. Till some time back, I had read no fiction in the genre of Magical Realism. I l...

****/*****                                                                                                                   Biography/Science Darwin Adrian Desmond and James Moore Before him, we were slave of a capricious creator on whose inscrutable whim we came into the world. He lay down immutable laws on Good and Evil which could be transgressed only on the promise of eternal condemnation to the fires of hell. He g...

** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                                     History Iran: Empire of Mind Michael Axworthy Think Persia and mind conjures up images of Nadir Shah, Omar Khayyam, Ayatollah Khomeini and latter’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Few of us are aware that Islamic conquest of Persia (modern day Iran) is a relatively recent event in the long history of this ancient land which is the birthplace of probably the oldest religion of the world, Zoroastrianism. In sixth century BC Achaemenid empire was the largest empire outside china. Its boundaries stretched from Eg...

****/*****                                                                                                                                        Novel One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez Jose Arcadio Buendia founds a village, Maconde, by a river somewhere on a Caribbean island. Maconde is far from a...

****/*****                                                                                                                                  Science How Mind Works Steven Pinker             Human mind, as distinct from brain but ineluctably linked to it (like digestion with gut, respiration with lungs), defines and distinguishes our species. We not only reproduce, eat, defecate but think of past and fret over future. We speculate on imaginary situations and how these could have affected our past and might change our future. We think of beauty, we enjoy and create art and literature, we deeply value mor...

***/*****                                                                                                                                       Science Factfulness: Ten reasons why we are wrong about the world and why things are better than you think Hans Rosling Human mind evolved to proffer certain advantage to its owner, so that the latter could survive better in its environment and consequently leave behind more copies of its genes. Knowledge of imminent dangers lurking just around the corner, choice about nutritious food, ways to procure a healthy mate and nurture a large brood of children; these skills helped in out-breeding other species....