by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Caesar’s Last Breath; Author: Sam Kean; Publisher: Doubleday/Penguin Random House UK; Pages: 384; Price: Rs 699
There is one thing that unites all us humans, no matter how different we may think we are, or however separated we may be in space and time — at some time or the other, we will breathe in the same molecules exhaled by our immediate neighbour or a stranger across the city, or perhaps even someone in a different continent or century.
“For instance, is it possible that your next breath — this one, right here — might include some of the same air that Julius Caesar exhaled when he died?” asks Sam Kean, an incisive, interdisciplinary, informative — but also most humorous — science populariser. And he goes on to do the necessary math, science and geography to show how possible it is.
And not only Caesar, it could be anyone or anything — from blue whales to bacteria — that breathes, he says.
In his latest book, Kean not only focuses on this aspect but goes far beyond it to craft a unique look at the underlying matter in this phenomenon, to show how its different forms and combinations not only make us but also the universe we inhabit.
As he tells us that the “how-many-molecules-in-X’s-last-breath exercise has become a classic thought experiment in physics and chemistry courses”, but whenever he heard it, he grew restless. “…Why not go further and trace these air molecules to even bigger and wilder phenomenon? Why not tell the full story of all the gases we inhale?”
Kean then goes on to show how every “milestone in Earth’s history you see — from the first Hadean volcanic eruptions to the emergence of complex life — depended critically on the behaviour and evolution of gases”.
It is also gases that not only gave us the air around us but also “reshaped our solid continents and transfigured our liquid oceans”, for the “story of Earth is the story of its gases”.
And he also demonstrates that our lives — especially their length — would be nothing without gases. Leave alone their role in keeping us alive (more than food which we can survive without for weeks and water which we can do without for some days), it was their nature that enabled civilisation to survive, develop and prosper .
For it was understanding their physical power that enabled us make machines that powered industry and transportation and materials that enforce our will in war or reshaping nature. It was exploiting their chemical properties that made possible construction of the edifices of modern civilisation, enabled painless surgeries and helped us grow sufficient food to meet the requirements of a growing population.
His gassy quest, rendered in his witty style, is divided into three parts — dealing with gases in nature, their utilisation by human beings, and the evolution of the relationship in recent times. And with some memorable interludes, Keane takes us through a rollicking ride from the creation of our solar system and our world and its changing atmospheres to the nuclear age and beyond.
But as his account does chronicle some of the greatest scientific discoveries and technological inventions and features all kinds — committed, publicity-hungry, plagiarising, self-testing — of scientists and inventors, it also includes many others too.
Here you also can find charlatans who advanced the cause of surgery, the reformed bootlegger who lived near an active US volcano for five decades and couldn’t be dislodged after warnings of eruption except “in the most spectacular way possible”, the world’s only successful performing “fartomaniac”, the pig who survived a nuclear blast and many others.
A superb and accessible piece of science writing, its biggest lesson is how we owe our existence to random actions of various molecules. And why we should not forget this in the hubris of our achievements.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’s Quest for Disarmament in a Nuclear Subcontinent; Author: Larry Pressler; Publisher: Penguin Random House India; Pages: 304; Price: Rs 699
Could the North Korean nuclear issue, which is giving the world an anxious time due to the presence of hotheads on either side, the invasion of Iraq and its toxic fallout, and above all, the arms race in the teeming but impoverished South Asian subcontinent have been averted if a crucial piece of US legislation had been implemented honestly?
It is a tantalising “what if” scenario, especially for the prospect of a more peaceful South Asia, but it could have well worked, says the American lawmaker whose name became linked to an effective but short-lived effort towards this end — one which went on to make him revered in India, reviled in Pakistan and ended his political career.
“The US government had enough carrots and sticks to control the spread of nuclear weapons in the 1980s and the ’90s…. It is my contention that, if we had continued to apply the Pressler Amendment standards in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, the world would have been a much safer place, the Indian subcontinent would have been nuclear-free, and we would not have fought the Iraq war,” contends Senator Larry Pressler, author of the amendment that blocked US aid to Pakistan for five years in the early 1990s due to its clandestine nuclear efforts.
But, in his engaging memoir-cum-account of arms control/non-proliferation efforts-cum-analysis of the workings of the US government, he admits how much of a dim chance it was — given the challenging, deep-pocketed adversary he faced.
For working on all pistons to render his venture ineffective, or sidestep it, was a massive shadowy but most potent entity with a vested interest in ensuring conflict and tension so it could keep up its business of selling arms to one, or preferably, both parties.
It is this entity, the new military-industrial complex that Pressler terms the “Octopus”, and holds responsible for encouraging Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons. He also explains why succeeding US administrations — from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama — have seemed fully oblivious of Pakistan’s duplicity and continued giving it military aid.
This entity’s activities also explain why the US and India, despite their landmark nuclear pact, have seen their relations only flourish in the military aspect, he says.
Identifying the “Octopus” as the present form of the “military-industrial complex” President Dwight D. Eisenhower had warned against in his farewell speech in 1959, Pressler seeks to explain how this multi-tentacled creature works in the “revolving door” reality of American politics and how it got its revenge on him in two elections nearly two decades apart.
While he tells in detail the story of his Amendment and its chequered history, how it was weakened and repealed, the “massive Octopus labyrinth that now controls the purse strings in Washington” and “the total control of lobbyists in Washington and, to some extent, in India”, he poses some pertinent questions about US relations with India and Pakistan.
Alongside, Pressler recounts his own singular story of rising from a humble background in South Dakota to become a Rhodes Scholar (where his contemporaries included Indian economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Pakistan politician and acting President Wasim Sajjad), and leaving Oxford’s cloisters to serve in the Vietnam War and finally his entry into politics — the first Vietnam vet to become a Senator.
From his political career, he provides some some unique insights into US’ non-proliferation efforts, both legislative executive, from Reagan to Bill Clinton, who not only wiped out the Pressler Amendment — and was rewarded with the 1998 N-tests — but also reneged on other promises.
And Pressler, who includes some evocative accounts of visits to a supportive India and hostile Pakistan (where his hosts ensured a remarkable episode to show his Amendment’s effects), makes his inclination towards the former clear.
Dwelling on the course of the US-India relationship over the last three decades, he gives his predictions for their nuclear pact’s future, and recommendations for a new “super US-India” alliance on the lines it has with Britain and Israel.
All this goes on to make this work not only the recollection of a promising venture scuttled and its reverberations, but also a roadmap for a more peaceable future — with the persisting challenges well marked out.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Nishant Arora,
Title: Hit Refresh; Author: Satya Nadella; Publisher: Harper Collins; Pages: 272; Price: Rs 599
When you hit “Refresh” in a web browser by clicking the little arrow — or press the “F5” function key — it quickly updates the web page, without wiping out anything but opening the page afresh.
For India-born Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, hitting refresh in life is something any person or organisation looking to make a sustained impact over a long period of time must learn to do and implement.
Some people and organisations have one major “hit refresh” moment and others hit refresh often.
In “Hit Refresh” — while taking the readers through his personal journey from Hyderabad to the company’s ongoing transformation at Redmond, Washington State, in the US — Nadella is confident that the knowledge he inherited in India is helping him write new codes of life for Microsoft’s global audience: Be it Cloud, Microsoft 365, Windows 10 and the emerging disruptive technologies.
“Looking back, I have been influenced by both my father’s enthusiasm for intellectual engagement and my mother’s dream of a balanced life for me,” he writes.
After attending schools in Srikakulam and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, Mussoorie, Delhi and Hyderabad — and later flunking an IIT entrance exam — Nadella landed in the US.
There was no master plan but a call from Microsoft, for him, “was time to hit refresh again”.
Today, Microsoft is at the leading edge of Cloud-based technologies as it infuses capital into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for an inclusive, democratic “Intelligent Cloud” architecture.
For Nadella, the future belongs to AI-based computing and Microsoft is building the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer and making the infrastructure available to everyone.
On Monday, during his keynote address at the ongoing “Microsoft Ignite” event in Orlando, Florida, Nadella said Microsoft has been working to invent a universal, programmable quantum computer and to identify revolutionary applications that will run on it.
In the book, Nadella sheds light on the ongoing activities and future plans to build new computational methods for programming the quantum computer.
“Through quantum computing, we can unlock solutions to problems in areas such as AI, clean energy, global warming, materials design and much more,” Nadella told the packed house at “Microsoft Ignite”.
At “Station Q”, writes Nadella, Microsoft researchers and collaborators are working days and nights to overcome challenges in the path towards universal quantum computing.
“At Microsoft, we’re on the cusp of empowering a quantum revolution with our unique, topological approach,” he told the gathering at the Orlando event, hoping that “quantum computing will make AI even more intelligent”.
Bill Gates, who has known Nadella for more than 20 years, writes in the Foreword: “Satya has charted a course for making the most of the opportunities created by technology while also facing up to the hard questions.”
“Ideas excite me,” Nadella explains. “Empathy grounds and centres me.”
In his latest blog on the book, Nadella wrote: “Books are so often written by leaders looking back on their tenures, not while they’re in the fog of war. What if we could share the journey together, the meditations of a sitting CEO in the midst of a massive transformation?”
“Hit Refresh” is about individual change, about the transformation happening inside Microsoft and the technology that will soon impact all of our lives: AI, Mixed Reality and quantum computing.
The book is “about how people, organisations and societies can and must transform and ‘hit refresh’ in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas and continued relevance and renewal”.
“We should be optimistic about what’s to come. The world is getting better, and progress is coming faster than ever. This book is a thoughtful guide to an exciting, challenging future,” Gates writes.
Don’t just buy the book to know who Nadella is. Instead, buy it to hit the refresh button in your life from “a principled, deliberative leader searching for improvement — for himself, for a storied company, and for society”.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta
Title: Everybody Lies – What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are; Author: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz; Publisher: Bloomsbury; Pages: 352; Price: Rs 499
It may have been the first to indicate Donald Trump would be the next US President, but while vintage radio show character “The Shadow” knew what evil lurks in the hearts of men, it also knows about human attitude, behaviour and mindsets — from the extent of racism in America, sex desires and worries worldwide, if sons or daughters are preferred, if people have read the books they claim to and much more.
This revealer of secrets, or rather a powerful computational technique which can find out anything is the much-misunderstood “Big Data” and its instrument is no more than “the everyday act of typing a word or phrase into a compact rectangular white box”.
For these, says data scientist-turned-economist Seth Stephens Davidowitz, “leaves a trace of truth that, when multiplied by millions, eventually reveals profound realities”.
Some may have realised this “white box” is the Google search box. But it is not only an online search tool, for, as he contends — and shows in this book — it is a receptacle for some of the things we really believe or think but don’t reveal, as well an oracle for what we want to know, but don’t want to ask anyone.
And with a range of Google tools to facilitate analysis of all this Big Data, we can learn much more about who people “really are” and what they actually think or do as opposed to what they say they think or have done or will do.
Davidowitz, an internet data expert who daily tracks the digital trails of people traversing the web for this purpose, argues the approach can be more reliable as people are much liable to be less than true in surveys — which teenagers mostly take perverse pleasure in distorting — or on social media.
To back his claim about surveys, he cites a telling discrepancy from Americans sex lives, citing a respected survey which reports a wide divergence in the number of condoms heterosexual men and woman say they use per year, while condom sales are only a little above half of the lower figure.
Beginning with his claim how internet searches showed that Trump was poised to win — and making a compelling case, interspersed with how he got into the field and the tools that helped (eg, Google Trends) him, Davidowitz notes that initially online search data was not deemed a proper information source for “serious” research.
Google was intended to help people to learn about the world, not to help researchers learn about people, he says, but “it turns out that the trails we leave as we seek knowledge on the internet are tremendously revealing”.
And while seeking to draw all kinds of information from this large reservoir (not only limited to Google) of unguarded and uninhibited opinions and questions — including how correct are the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, the surprising sex demand of Indian husbands, the worrying extent of racism in the US, the relation between reel and real crime, anxiety levels after terror attacks, how the best racehorses were chosen and more intriguing stuff — Davidowitz also seeks to tell us what Big Data really is — and how new, how “big” it should be, and how intuitive it actually is.
He is understandably gung-ho over his approach, but while he also points out its limitations — understanding correlation may not establish an understanding causation; also, the link between online searches and real personalities may be a compelling but not conclusive, and in such complex entities such as people, there can be more contributory factors towards attitudes than only online behaviour.
However, it is a start on what promises to be a key source of information about us in an increasingly digital world and Davidowitz’s accessible, witty but incisive account, which he terms as the new level of (the interesting but now a bit discredited) “Freakonomics” and replete with a wide range of research, anecdotes, personal experiences and telling facts, is a good start to understanding its principles and intricacies.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Himani Kothari,
Title: In a Foreign Land, By Chance; Author: Nabaneeta Dev Sen; Translator: Soma Das; Publisher: Niyogi Books; Pages: 144; Price: Rs 295
How is a person’s identity constructed? Does it owe to the place people hail from, or the place they are in or end up in? Does the language in which they articulate their ideas define them, or are their choices that make them what they are or what they have become?
The protagonist in “In a Foreign Land, By Chance”, a Bengali woman poet living in London, struggles with some of these questions as she faces the existential crisis of being far away from her home, her people and her language — given that she writes in English. And they pop up all the more when she visits an East Bloc nation for a literary meet.
How did Bipasha even end up where she is? That is the basis of this evocative story by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, set in the 1970s, and drawing some parallels between the “police state” that West Bengal had become in response to the Maoists (who were no democrats either) and the repressive Gustav Husak regime in Czechoslovakia, in the wake of the abortive Prague Spring.
But above all, it focuses on the human quest for “home”, belonging, handling loss and nostalgia — and making our future.
Bipasha is a privileged, status-quoist Bengali who falls in love with a “red” activist. But when he is caught and jailed, she escapes West Bengal to end up in London. She is looking for many things apart from closure. But will she find any of them there or during her stint in Czechoslovakia?
Apart from some closure, Bipasha does find comfort of sorts in the communist nation, the same communism she had hated in her country and had run away from.
“Many things in East Europe reminded Bipasha of her country. After about five years in the West, she suddenly felt as though she had come closer to home. Yet, she couldn’t put a finger on exactly where the similarity lay.”
Told in the third person, the narrative goes back and forth as everything reminds Bipasha of lost love and questions left unanswered, of unsaid goodbyes and loss of identity.
Though the character of Bipasha feels a bit of a pushover at times, dependent on her wealthy father and easily surrendering to her family’s demands, she is a feminist in her own way. She stands her ground in a foreign land. Though sometimes guilty, she is not afraid to enjoy her newly-found sexual liberation or to question the way of life of the people she finds herself in the midst of.
In this pensive novella, Sen, who was once married to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, gives an insight into life in communist Czechoslovakia, where the Stalinist regimes of Klement Gottwald and Antonin Novotny had eased briefly under Aleksandr Dubcek before Warsaw Pact armies intervened to reinstate a totalitarian system, making most people live in fear of the secret police, afraid of everything.
While not exactly a critique of communism, the work does show its dark side — how it oppresses and represses the same people it claims to stand up for — while drawing on similarities between Soviet-style communism in satellite nations and communism in India.
It also talks about the power and politics of language. And the fact that Sen chose to write the novel in Bengali, her mother tongue, is perhaps the strongest statement.
“Language! Of course. Wasn’t that the primary weapon of imperialism? Forceful introduction into a different culture and thought path through the medium of language. Else, how would the brainwash be possible? Now Bipasha understood what the argument was all about and why.”
Translated by Soma Das many decades later, this still feels as fresh and relevant as was the original in 1977, and will strike a deeper chord given the increasing strength of the diaspora.
We travel for various reasons, but some places give us more than we take from them. This book shows one of them.
(Himani Kothari can be contacted at himani.k@ians.in)
—IANS
