Books

Ajit Singh- (and Pavita's)- Top 2008 Reads

by Ajit Singh & Pavita Singh

 

Ajit Singh's Preface & Top-10 Picks  

2008 was a year of change for me - a vector pointing generally to adventure and uncertainty. I left Siemens after a twenty-year run, and moved nine time zones west to run a startup company. My weekly commute between New York and Frankfurt was replaced by a routine of equal disruption - living out of suitcases in Palo Alto.

Panta rei!

This reading list has also taken on a new dimension this year. In addition to my usual categories of the past years, namely Literature, Philosophy, Biology, Management/ Economics, History/ Politics, and Math/ Science, I have included a new section: Bibliophiles in the making.

As it turns out, my older daughter Pavita has turned out to be an avid reader, and has managed to surround herself with friends that share the same passion. Result: I received "guest submissions".

I have included them unedited, along with my daughter's preface. This is the fifteenth such list since I started the year-end ritual in the early 90s at Princeton. As in all the previous years, the criterion for including a book in my Top-10 list is very personal:

Is this a book that I am likely to read again?

LITERATURE (Fiction / Non-Fiction)

1. Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book, Viking, 2008.

I was drawn to this book for two reasons. First, this is a work of (historical) fiction by a journalist. Some of my very favorite books belong to this category (Andre Brink's Before I Forget and Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan have appeared in my Top-10 lists in the past years).

Second, I had the opportunity to meet the author through a mutual friend; the conversation included a first-hand account of her inspiration behind this book. Part mystery, part historical fiction (with emphasis on the word fiction), and part (complex) love story, this is a book whose main character is a... book.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is a 14th century manuscript with a tumultuous history. The book, containing an account of the Passover, and illuminated in a manner similar to Christian manuscripts, was completed in an era when illustrations were unknown in Jewish religious texts. It survived its journey from the Iberian Peninsula to Sarajevo, up against the fires during the Inquisitions, Nazi attacks in Bosnia during World War II, and more recently, the siege of Sarajevo.

These and a few other historical facts were available to Brooks as her "platform." The rest is the outcome of her imagination and a sense of ease with mystery.

The book begins with the arrival of Hanna Heath, a manuscript conservator from Australia, in Sarajevo in 1996. During her examination of the manuscript, Hanna finds a fragment of an insect's wing, a wine stain, and a small white hair. These, among other clues, are the starting point for Hanna's analysis - forensic interspersed with philosophical and metaphysical.

Along this journey, the reader gets an intricate lesson in history - of the key milestones in the life of the book. One such milestone is the disclosure of the reasons behind the illustrations. In a breathtaking and intimate first-person account by the captive artist who creates the book's original illuminations, his quest for freedom underscores the broader theme of the liberation of the Jews in the Haggadah.

Intricately woven into the core story is a companion account of Hanna's romance with the Muslim librarian who saved the book. This was a welcome distraction from the occasional dose of detail in the main story. Given the masterful storytelling of Geraldine Brooks, I am sure this was not accidental.

For the record, Brooks covered the Bosnian War as a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, and won a Pulitzer for her earlier work, March.

2. Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days, Harper Collins, 2008.

The first book by Isabel Allende that I read was Paula. The memoir - triggered by the tragic death of Allende's daughter Paula - was heart-wrenching. It also sparked a spontaneous love affair between me and everything that Allende wrote.

The Sum of Our Days is also a memoir - the story of characters and events around Isabel Allende, since Paula's death. Not unexpectedly, love and loss are the two central themes of this book. And her prose is as economic as it is hypnotic: "In these years without you I have learned to manage sadness, making it my ally. Little by little your absence and other losses in my life are turning into a sweet nostalgia."

The vastness of this memoir's scope is best captured by Sarah Vine in her review for The Times, "Throughout it all, permeating every aspect of Allende's existence drifts the ghost of her late daughter, Paula ... through conversations with Paula, and with Paula always in mind, Allende shares the experiences of belonging to - and presiding over - a sprawling, peculiar, imperfect and yet ultimately loving group of friends and relations. In every line and every page, Allende shows us something of human nature, with all its passions, perversions and permutations."

Since my first trip to South America in 1993, I have been fascinated by its history, its culture, and its passionate people. During that visit, I had come across a book on the history of the continent: Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano. I never managed to read it until a recent edition appeared with an introduction by Isabel Allende. I am 100 pages into the book, and it will definitely make it into the History/Politics section in my 2009 Top-10.

PHILOSOPHY

3. Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop, Basic Books, 2007.

I had posted Hofstadter's 1979 Pulitzer winning Goedel, Escher, Bach in my Top-10 last year. That alone was a reason to read I am a Strange Loop. An equally compelling reason is the fact that he is a computer scientist who has taken on the study of consciousness. Here is an excerpt from the inside cover:

"Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be there? If it can, then how can we understand this baffling emergence?... Does an "I" exert genuine power on the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all powerful laws of Physics?"

"The fundamental question that Hofstadter tries to address is the one of the emergence of the "symbol" that we call "I". He connects the "strange loop" of self-reference to the notion of emergence, to Gödel's famous incompleteness result and to Escher's drawings."

Hofstadter's "theory" of consciousness based on the observation that any reasonably complex hierarchical system has the ability to "turn back" on itself, refer to itself, observe itself. Considering the complexity of the underlying system - that is, the brain - the ability of the system to be aware of itself is not very surprising. Hofstadter's is definitely not the first attempt to understand consciousness, nor is it unique (as an approach).

Over the past five decades, the "theories" of consciousness have gradually passed from the domain of philosophy into those of neurophysiology, evolutionary biology, and information theory. There is even a Journal of Consciousness Studies, now in its 15th year.

In my Top-10 reviews of earlier years, I have posted writings of Oliver Sachs, Gerald Edelman, V.S. Ramachandran, to name a few. What is refreshing about I am a Strange Loop is the deeply personal story that triggered Hofstadter to turn to this problem: the death of his wife from brain cancer.

As Publishers Weekly puts it, "... it is impossible not to experience this book as a tender, remarkably personal and poignant effort to understand the death of his wife from cancer in 1993 - and to grasp how consciousness mediates our otherwise ineffable relationships.

"In the end, Hofstadter's view is deeply philosophical rather than scientific. It is hopeful and romantic as well, as his model allows one consciousness to create and maintain within itself true representations of the essence of another. The book is all Hofstadter - part theory, some of it difficult; part affecting memoir; part inventive thought experiment - presented for the most part with an incorrigible playfulness."

In my personal opinion, consciousness is not a topic for the reductionists. It needs "integration scientists." That's why Hofstadter appeals to me.

A great companion-read to this book is Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, by Chris Frith.

BIOLOGY:

4. Stuart A. Kaufmann, Reinventing the Sacred, Basic Books, 2008.

You might recall At Home in the Universe by the same author, posted on this list a few years ago. The book was a tour de force on self organization and complexity. Kaufmann has done it again, this time taking his understanding of the nature of complexity in biological systems a step further - to include divinity. He explains how the qualities of divinity that we hold so sacred - creativity, meaning, and purposeful action - can be investigated with the "laws" of complexity and emergence.

Why is this book classified in the Biology section? Because it does not fit any category. So I picked one that best describes the starting point of the book. It will not be an overstatement to call Stuart Kaufmann the new Spinoza.

MANAGEMENT/ECONOMICS:

5. Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, W.W. Norton and Company, 2008.

Paul Krugman is to macroeconomics today what Keynes was a generation ago: an insightful economist, a prolific writer, and an objective, balanced critic. The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 does not have all the answers that anyone interested in the current economic crisis is looking for. In large part, I believe it is because the book was written with an intent to influence the immediate debates and policies, rather than give definitive prescriptions that have been thought through end-to-end.

It is extremely helpful to turn to Krugman's original book, The Return of Depression Economics, published in 1999. The core of that work was made up of analyses of the two greatest economic disasters of the 1990s: the period of complete economic stagnation in Japan, and the waves of currency crises and depression. Krugman's treatment of the state of Japanese economy in that period of stagnation was as analytical as it was prescriptive.

The collapse of the financial bubble of the 1980s depressed consumption and investment spending. Banks' and other institutions' large bets on the real estate market meant that the collapse of the bubble put them "underwater" - with assets and lines of business that were worth less than the debt they already owed that they had borrowed to speculate in real estate.

And Krugman recommended doing "everything." Specifically, he suggested that government run a substantial deficit, have the central bank push the interest rate it charges close to zero, and if needed, try to deliberately engineer moderate inflation. If demand is depressed because people think investing in corporations is too risky, change their minds by making the alternative to investment spending - hoarding your money in cash - risky too, by having a share of its real purchasing power eaten away by inflation.

As to the treatment of 2008 in the current book, suffice it to say that Krugman claims that the financial crisis of 2008 is "functionally similar" (to the problem he described in his 1999 book).

Specifically, Krugman argues the United States should worry about deficits and debt when only the economy is on the rebound.

This review will not be complete unless I recommend something with a contrarian viewpoint. Check out Robert Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence.

HISTORY/POLITICS

6. Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, Penguin, 2008.

My fascination with Jewish history goes back to my first few years in the United States in the mid 80s; many of the fellow students I got to know personally at Columbia were Jewish. Later, in 1997, I befriended a physician of Jewish heritage. My interest in Judaism and Jewish culture took on a more conscious form.

Several books on these themes have been on my Top-10 lists over the past years, starting with Thomas Cahill's The Gift of the Jews in 1998.

(Earlier this year, I made a stop at the Jewish Synagogue in Plzen during a trip through the Czech Republic. That triggered me to make a "pilgrimage" to Strand Bookstore upon my return to New York and stock up on recent books on the subject, including Rome and Jerusalem).

This is a book about the very original clash of civilizations. It is written by one of the leading authorities on Jewish Studies, currently a professor at Oxford University and a Fellow of the British Academy, who is also adept at presenting a work of rigorous scholarship in a compelling and engaging style.

The city of Jerusalem had once blossomed under the Roman Empire, in a context framed by strong trade links and centuries of peace and religious tolerance. That was until 70 AD, that is, when the fabled Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the future emperor Titus. In the immediate aftermath of this destruction, the Jewish people were subjected to increased taxation and discrimination. This period culminated in Judea being renamed to Palestina - the first known attempt in history to achieve a combination of political and religious hegemony.

All of this is history, is well researched, and well known. The new question that Rome and Jerusalem addresses is whether such a deterioration of relations between the two great cities was inevitable, or even deliberate, or whether it just "turned out to be" - as an unintended consequence of political intrigues.

"Was there anything intrinsic in Jewish and Roman society that made it impossible for Jerusalem and Rome to coexist? Were the tensions which had so dramatic an effect in August 70 already apparent in 30 when Jesus preached in Jerusalem and died there on the order of a Roman governor? And, as early Christians began to carry their faith out from Jerusalem to the wider Roman Empire, what was the effect of the conflict between Jews and Romans on the relations between Jews and Christians in a Roman world?"

Goodman postulates that despite the stark cultural differences between the Romans and the Jews, the sequence of events after 70 AD was not inevitable. It was, instead, a consequence of political miscalculations. An indication of how little trouble the Romans expected from the Jews was the low caliber of the governors sent to this area (thought of by the Romans as "politically insignificant"), and the small numbers of troops thought necessary to govern it.

Specifically, although Emperor Vespasian made the decision to end the unrest in Judaea by sending his son Titus to "control" Jerusalem, there was no original intention to destroy the temple; it was an outcome random indiscipline by soldiers. Once the temple had burned, to avoid the perception of incompetence (having let an army get out of control), the emperor and his son decided to proclaim their victory not just over Judaea but over Judaism.

If you are interested in (an even more) comprehensive treatment of the subject, try the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies by the same author.

7. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Team of Rivals, Simon and Schuster, 2005

The Team of Rivals is a conjoined biography of five personalities, four of whom contended for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination and all of whom later worked together in Lincoln's cabinet. Abraham Lincoln's genius in pulling together this team of personal and political rivals that helped him lead the United States through its greatest internal crisis is unparalleled in history.

Works by and about Lincoln, including The Team of Rivals have been copiously reviewed. My commentary will not add much value. By including this "review" in this list, I merely want to remind myself that I am likely to read this book again.

An unusual companion to this book is Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln & Charles Darwin, by David R. Contosta. Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day, February 12th, 1709. The similarities between the two personalities go far beyond the shared birthday.

SCIENCE/MATH

8. Luisa Gilder, The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn, Random House, 2008.

As a preface, I would like to point out that I have been spoilt by having sat in many of Richard Feynman's lectures and having had two one-on-one coffee sessions with him in December of 1986. I enjoy reading Physics, but it takes someone of Feynman's oratory and didactics to captivate me through a Physics writing.

Luisa Guilder's book had that effect; I read the 464 pages in four sittings flat.

In 1935, Albert Einstein (after many years of rejecting the key claims of Quantum Theory) wrote a paper demonstrating that quantum mechanics predicted the interaction between two separated particles, and he called it "spooky action at a distance." In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger referred to this correlation "entanglement."

The existence of this phenomenon was experimentally confirmed only in 1964, by the Irish physicist John Bell. Gilder's book tells the story of what happened during those years between 1935 and 1964 (and since then), with a rich cast of characters including Albert Einstein, David Bohm, Richard Feynman, Robert Oppenheimer, John Bell, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie.

And here is the clincher: This is Louisa Gilder's first book (she graduated from Dartmouth College in 2000). If you are interested in a less biographical, more "teach me everything I need to know in less than 100 pages" treatment of Quantum Mechanics, try John Gribbin's In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (posted as a "companion" book in my Top-10 two years ago). It is written in a very clear, understandable prose - even though it does not pass the Feynman-test.

9. John Moffat, Reinventing Gravity, Harper Collins, 2008.

This is a book with a provocative thesis. It might not withstand the test of time.

Gravity has been that final missing link in that has made a "Theory of Everything" out of reach. Moffat, working at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, puts forth a new theory that he calls Modified Gravity (MOG).

His most provocative claims: (a) Newton's gravitational constant is not constant across distances as large as galaxies and galaxy clusters, and (b) dark matter and black holes don't exist. Stated differently, he claims that both Newton and Einstein got it wrong (vis-à-vis gravity). His theory predicts a grey star, a massive object with a subset of the properties of a black hole. In a nutshell: MOG is able to model the movements of the Universe without recourse to dark matter.

As a piece of historical tidbit, Moffat had a correspondence with Einstein and a conversation with Niels Bohr at an early stage in his career. Also, as an aside, plenty has been written on what Einstein got wrong. The most recent addition to that genre, and perhaps the most delectable to read, is Einstein's Mistakes: The Failings of a Human Genius, by Hans Ohanian.     

NOTABLE AUTHORS OF INDIAN ORIGIN

10. Farrukh Dhondy, Poona Company, Harper Collins, 2008 (Harper Collins India Edition).

I first read this book in 1985, during my very first airplane ride (from Delhi to New York). I knew nothing of the Parsi people until then, other than the fact that a few very important names in Indian business were Parsi.

Dhondy's book is a collection of nine extremely poignant and humorous stories - set in a Parsi neighborhood in 1950s Poona. Sarbatwalla Chowk is the epicentre where his characters come from. They cover a wide and intriguing gamut: Samson the street-dweller; Eddie the Inventor; a blind man and his guide,  Black Dog, who is known to have special powers; Confession D'Souza, the boy who loses favor with the Jesuits over a "dirty book"; Chamak - focused on winning the college elections (and the heart of someone he knows only as "Jhansi-ki-Rani"); and finally, Farrukh himself, distressed over a pair of broken spectacles.

Poona Company presents a picture of ordinary, "regular" people in small-town India, captured with a keen eye and a compassionate heart.

 

BIBLIOPHILES IN THE MAKING:

 

Pavita's Preface

"A room without books is like a body without a soul," said Cicero.

I cannot think of a more perfect analogy, as I believe that the written word is at the crux of the mind-body-soul connection. I often spend much time contemplating the question of why people write. I feel that stories inspire people, impact people, and drive people to reflect. Stories can be a means of sharing an experience, a commentary on society, or simply a product of wishful thinking.

This is essentially what life is: a combination of our interactions with others in various settings along with our own introspection. The human mind is an enigma, and literature holds one of many keys to help unlock it.

This annual book review is normally a selection of my dad's top recommendations. My primary role has always been behind the scenes as his editor. This year I'm aiming for something different. A couple of weeks ago, I turned 18 and I celebrated with a group of close friends. A continuation of that celebration lies in this year's book review. I invited my friends to each contribute one of their top recommendations to this very special selection.

I would like to express my gratitude to the people who have impacted me by giving them the opportunity to share a piece of what has impacted them with all of you. So enjoy! Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and many happy literary adventures!

 

(i) In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Review by Stephanie Gallagher

The best "novel" - if you can consolidate it as such - that I've read all year is Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The text is made up of six volumes: Swann's Way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive and the Fugitive, and Time Regained.

I'll admit, the length of the text and the verbose language that Proust employs makes In Search of Lost Time seem very intimidating at first, but after one finishes the first volume, it gets easier to navigate.

The novel focuses on the life of Proust's unnamed protagonist and his interactions with the changing climates of late nineteenth to early twentieth century French society. What Proust crafts is an honest and impeccably human memoir of thought. Each of his characters is memorable, complex, and universally relatable; even the seemingly most eccentric and deplorable characters hold redeeming qualities that, if nothing else, vividly illustrate their humanity.

While reading, I found myself able to identify pieces of myself and of others in virtually every character. What Proust wishes to capture through In Search of Lost Time is the very concept of "lost time" itself; it is always more precious and beautiful in retrospect than in the present, a lesson I indeed learned when I reached the end of the novel.

Having struggled through reading In Search of Lost Time and wanting several times to abandon it altogether, I was surprised to find that upon finishing the novel I was left wanting more. Looking back upon my experiences with the text, I have realized that my struggles with it have allowed me to grow as both an individual and as a writer, showing me that no journey, no matter how difficult, is worth abandoning half-way through, for the lessons one learns by the end of the journey are invaluable and transforming.

In Search of Lost Time has granted me one of the most precious gifts I could ever wish to receive - the ability to see my own life through Proust's eyes, and in turn appreciate everything I experience - be it struggle or contentment.

(ii) The Bell Jar  by Sylvia Plath

Review by Lauren Kuhn

For many, it's not difficult to judge our level of success in terms of how the world sees us - what we have accomplished in terms of career, academia, community involvement, material achievement.

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar introduces Esther, who, by traditional societal standards of her time, is admired and seen by others as talented and successful; an ambitious young woman, she has always been accomplished academically, and the novel begins with her receiving an internship at a well-known magazine in New York City.

Confronted by the triteness and superficiality of peers and superiors alike (and perhaps even more alarmingly, by the notion that this is what society expects and values them to be), the novel traces Esther's descent into depression and mental instability.

Although distressing in the rather bleak and dismal outlook of its main character, most far-reaching is the novel's ability, almost forty-six years since its first publication, to push and to challenge us to look at our lives intrinsically rather than extrinsically, in order to gauge meaning for ourselves rather than a level of admiration from others, lest we are trapped under and stifled within our own bell jars as society looks upon us, tells us we are accomplished, we are admirable, we are worthy.

(iii) The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Review by Pavita Singh

I read the essay, The American Scholar, as an assignment for my philosophy class this semester.

In this essay, Emerson comments on what education is and what it should entail. He argues that to be a scholar should not simply be to enter into a specialized way of life. Instead, one should be educated to become a holistic human being.

Emerson writes that education is rooted not only in the classroom, but also in nature and in our everyday experiences. The most valuable lessons, therefore, come from taking risks and from trying things that you wouldn't ordinarily try. One gains something from each of these new experiences.

The line that I appreciate the most in this essay is, "Character is higher than intellect."

It reinforces a strong belief I hold which is that the entire life is an education. As recently as a few months ago, I was overly obsessed with my academic achievements, my performance in school, my grades, and all that which relates specifically to the classroom. My experiences since starting college, however, have been important reminders that life encompasses so much more than what exists solely in the world of academia; it encompasses experiences that can enrich a person in ways that sitting in a lecture hall cannot.

I am not by any means less of an academic or an intellectual than I was before starting college. I have, however, become more comfortable with the fact that I don't always have to be the best in every subject because there is so much more to me than my intellect. My goal as of now is in fact to become a scholar in the traditional academic sense, but The American Scholar has reminded me that no matter what, I am always a scholar of life.

 

December 26, 2008

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