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 looked f

*** 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 principle revolutions that shaped its history viz. ‘Cognitive revolution that kick-started history about 70,000 years ago, Agricultural revolution that sped it up about 12,000 years ago and the scientific revolution (that) got underway only about 500 years ago but may well end history…’ in his own words. Harari offers some ingenious comments and analysis on these epoch-changing events in our history. According to him the greatest attribute that cognitive revolution gave our species was ability to believe collectively in imagined myths. This led to invention of religion, belief in nationhood, rule of law. These imaginary concepts catalysed coope

****/*****                                                                                                                         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 Elliot spent one of his summer vacations during his schooling years, in Afghanistan and fell in love with the country and its people. This was his maiden visit to Afghanistan during the Russian occupation and he spent time with Mujahedeen, Afghans fighting Russians, observing from close quarters their struggle and their war-torn lives. He was then nineteen years old. He visited Afghanistan again in mid 90s after Russians had withdrawn but peace still eluded Afghanistan, as the country was in the throes of an ugly civil war and Taliban was the major player. This time he travelled widely

***/*****                                                                                                                                          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-winning poet. This, it seems, has been his only achievement in life. One day he receives an invitation for the wedding of his companion, who has been his lover for eight years. Life could not be more cruel. He is at the end of his tethers. And he is about to turn fifty. Is this the end of life for him? He can’t attend the wedding. On the spur of the moment, he decides to accept an invitation- that has been languishing on his desk for months -to a string of ersatz literary events around the world: an offer to interview some science-fiction writer in New York; guest-almost as an afterthought-at an half-baked literary gathering in Mexico; an awards ceremony in Turin, Italy; A

***/*****                                                                                                             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 has no use for individuals who cannot reproduce any longer. Perhaps this is the reason that accidental mutations in human genome that code for healthy and long age are not selected by natural selection. Thus, old age in human beings is an exception in the animal world, an artificially created entity, product of our intricate socio-cultural milieu that generates our value system, wherein to look after old relatives is considered a most exalted moral duty. Breakup of joint family system in modern society has made it difficult, even

*** 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 written on religion or the lack of it (contrary to the popular notion, a person who is conventionally known not to have religion may well be one of the most religious in his beliefs on atheism, while a supposed believer may actually be quite casual and ignorant about his beliefs). In a clear and sparkling prose Russell puts forth his reasons for not believing in Christianity. He writes about Christianity but the arguments are true for all religions, so in effect he speaks for atheists. One may not agree with his reasons but none can deny the force and cogency of his arguments. His s

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 governed our daily lives down to minute details, yet absolved himself of any consequences of those very actions. Yet his self-proclaimed messengers, the clergy, told us that we possessed a free will which lets us choose the course of our life, hence inviting Creator’s wrath or approbation. I can’t fathom night of ignorance and misery darker than this. He, Charles Darwin, liberated men with the publication of his seminal book ‘Origin of Species’, a tour-de-force of unparalleled insight into the history of mankind. He put man in his real place in the order of b

** 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 Egypt and Greece in east to the eastern border of present-day Tajikistan and Afghanistan in the west. Axworthy has done a good job in presenting this panorama of Persian history in a concise, single volume. He talks of culture, religion, emperors, poets and writers who inhabited this great country and enriched this land for s

****/*****                                                                                                                                        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 any other human habitation. Jose Arcadio Buendia has an insatiable hunger for knowledge and curiosity for new discoveries. Group of gypsies, headed by the all-knowing and ever-inquisitive Melquiades, visit the village regularly and bring to the village, the news, the inventions, and the air of the larger world. Ursula, Jose’s wife, brings forth and nurtures the Buendia clan. Through the travails of Buendia family, spread over a century and a half, and five generations, Gabriel Garcia Marquez weaves a magical tale of the Caribbean nation and human condition. His tools are fantastical. People live for hundred and twenty years, birds sing magical songs on every roo

****/*****                                                                                                                                  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 moral rectitude and philosophise on value and meaning of life. On questioning, an overwhelming majority of people would say that human beings have evolved or were created solely for these functions and these were the goal that directed our evolution. But this is just not true in the light of modern theory of evolution by natural selection as discovered by Charles Darwin. Nature h

***/*****                                                                                                                                       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. Sadly, most intricate knowledge of how world worked, was not necessary in this scheme of things. But human mind has one great capacity. It never fails to come up with an answer to a riddle, of which it has no clue, whatsoever. It brings into action, mechanisms it employs to solve similar problems, though of vastly different nature