I read 100 non-fiction books. Here’s the elevator pitch for first 25 of them.

Rishikesh, India

I like reading. I happen to read non-fiction more often than fiction books. Over past 2–3 years, I have come across books by people on diverse subjects. These books are stories by people about themselves or other things about the world. The way I look at world has evolved tremendously because of the people who decided to write these books and share their world. I wanted to tell other people to read these books. So I decided to write a 30 seconds elevator-pitch for each of these books. Planning to write Part 2,3,4 soon.

1. Leonardo Da Vinci, Walter Issacson
   Walter Issacson takes you through the life of Leonardo Da Vinci and develops your perspective to be aware and be dazzled of one of the greatest polymath that humanity has known. Leonardo Da Vinci, that epitome of Renaissance man, insatiably curious, master craftsman, venerable philosopher, autodidact, painter, architect, engineer. The sheer breadth of Leonard’s interests and curiosities over his lifetime is delightful. To quote from the book,
   “There have been, of course, many other insatiable polymaths, and even the Renaissance produced other Renaissance men. But none painted the Mona Lisa, much less did so at the same time as producing unsurpassed anatomy drawings based on multiple dissections, coming up with schemes to divert rivers, explaining the reflection of light from the earth to the moon, opening the still beating heart of a butchered pig to show how ventricles work, designing musical instruments, choreographing pageants, using fossils to dispute the biblical account of the deluge, and then drawing the deluge.”
   Read this book if you want to start noticing infinitely many details of existence which Leonardo obsessed about, as his mind wandered across disciplines and brought a unity to existence which we want to conveniently dissect into art, technology, science, commerce and humanities.
2. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
   Trevor Noah sheds light on his story from a childhood spent in South Africa. The story is set in apartheid, when his existence as a coloured child was illegal. The story takes you through Trevor’s struggles to make sense of the mother who would keep hiding him, his black relatives who would bestow special treatment, his struggle to belong and his discontent with having to choose sides. It takes you through his times in ghetto, his strong and enduring bond with his mother. Trevor’s comic sense and his perspective on hardships drives home a strong lesson, that you can always have fun with everything that life throws at you, and then laugh about it when it’s over.
3. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
   The second in-line after much-raved-about Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. The hypothesis of the book is that humans, as a species needs to decide what to do next. Else, they will perish in mediocrity. Harari makes no claim to forecast future. He goes one level higher and contemplates on how future can’t be predicted by extrapolation. You study past to be liberated from it, so that you can imagine alternate scenarios and see possibilities. Read this book if you want to dwell upon possibilities of a world increasingly obsessed with deriving meaning out of sharing their existence with others, and imagine a future where the current rules might be obsolete.
4. Blood and Guts A History of Surgery by Hollingham, Richard
   Read this book if you want to learn about transformation of surgery into a science. Surgeon, a profession started out as tinkerers trying out their hand on fixing humans like machines, have evolved into a profession accorded with high distinction in medical profession. The book takes you from operating theatre in London (there’s a reason they are called ‘theatre’, people used to come to see surgeons ‘perform’ live surgeries) to a makeshift operating table in an Alabama hut for first heart surgery. This book details firsts in surgery, first open heart surgery, first cosmetic surgery, surgeries where patient survived miraculously. The book is riveting as it is full of stories of doctors cutting forehead skin to make nose, grabbing the heart with bare hands, cut legs with saw, inject paraffin wax into face. And it shows how the process driven sophisticated operating theatre of today are a product of experimentation of daring souls and countless failures and lessons learned along the way.
5. Lab Girl
   This book is written by Hope Jahren, geochemist and geobiologist. This is her story, and more importantly her story about becoming a scientist, of choosing to do what she wants to do. The book is about labor of love. More than anything this book is about two colleagues/friends, she and Bill, her lab-partner, and things they accomplish together. Read this book if you want to see what real work looks like, when you let go of lofty expectations and glorifying narratives and just focus on keeping your focus and do good work. Her lines, “Such recurrent pronouncements have forced me to accept that because I am a female scientist, nobody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along.” And you get to taste that delicious freedom as you flip the pages and go out exploring plants and trees with her.
6. The Gene: An Intimate History
   This book is beautiful because Siddhartha Mukherjee has such a multi-dimensional mind. At the core, the book rests on the thesis that every biological activity requires the decoding of coded instructions. And all the living beings are just manifestations of these coded instructions. This is huge if you have not got the hang of it yet. It largely means, that if you can learn these structure and access this information, then you can start to tamper with genetic code and produce your own variations of living things. And this is not a theoretical exercise as you read the examples in the book. This books touches upon discovery of DNA structure, genetic variations and hereditary illnesses, human genome project, eugenics. You’ll start reading this book thinking this book is about genetics, which it is, but when you are done reading, you would have contemplated the social, cultural, historical, moral and ethical implications of genetic sciences, and became good friends with Siddhartha as he weaves his personal history into the story of Genes he sets out to tell. Plus, he also hypothesises that if humans are just manifestations of data, then algorithms is the right way to go treat the diseases.
7. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
   You know, roughly half of the world population has been systematically subdued, subjugated, oppressed and denied their rights for the longest time and the discrimination looms large. When people talk about discrimination, they like to talk about racism, religion, geography and casteism, but the most insidious and deeply ingrained discrimination is one based on gender. On the surface, Sheryl does an amazing job of taking workplace as an example to explore how women can advance in their careers and break the gender stereotypes. But, this book goes one layer deep and explores the psyche of both men/women which hold women back. Read this book if you want to understand gender discrimination, because if you don’t understand it, you are perpetuating it. And it is responsibility of both men and women to learn how to do away with this plague which holds back half of the humanity.
8. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World
   We humans are pretty obsessed with ourselves, our existence, our experiences, and all that. With this book, Peter Wohlleben takes you to a tour of the wonderful world of trees. This book talks about trees and how they talk to each other and how they grow. It talks about communities that trees are part of, the way they help each other. The time-scale of tree-world in years and decades. Things happen slowly, they take time. You stop looking at all things fast moving and sit down and look at that tree on the road, that has been there for decades, and think about the roots, the leaves, and all the processes that hold it together, and all the fungi and ants and other organism that make up the micro-world for tree. Read this book if you want to open a new window to the world, a window with different actors, time-scale measured in years.
9. For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time: A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics
   Read this book if you want to look at Physics for the beauty it is. Professor Walter Lewin makes it a point to wow his students. If you thought physics was boring in school, pick up this book and be prepared to be dazzled as he brings physics to life with demonstration in his class. In one of his demonstrations to show how time-period of a pendulum is independent of it’s mass, he starts with a pendulum suspended by his hand and then goes on to sit on the pendulum and measure time-period.
10. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
    This author of the book is a runner, obsessed with running who keeps getting injured until he finds out about Tarahumara tribe of Mexico, people who can run 100 miles (~160 kms). Read this book if you are a runner. From the book, “If there’s any magic bullet to make humans healthy, it’s to run”. The book is set in Mexican Canyon, introduce you to ultra-runners and how they feel right at home, running 100 miles in one go. The book is written like a thriller, and culminates in an ultra-marathon organised by the author, and pitches Tarahumara runners against professional ultra-runners. Spread through the book are tidbits of a runner’s insights on life. “If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them.”
11. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
    Haruki Murakami is a widely read author and also a runner. This book is his meditation on running. More than anything, it’s a runner’s toast to long distance running. And with his contemplative and writing prowess, Murakami penetrates deep into the effect running had on his life. If you are a runner, this book will tell you all the reasons you love running, but have not thought them for yourself. You run to feel healthy, you run to take yourself into the void, you run to meditate, and you run to become stronger mentally. Read this if you are a long distance runner, and you will feel good about running and probably step out for a long run after reading this short book.
12. The Brain: The Story of You
    Read this book if you want to take a look at how brain works. It is a gentle introduction to how the brain comprehends the reality and how your brain is responsible for all the narratives that go on in your head. When they say, “It’s all in your head”, it actually is. This book takes you on a fascinating journey on inner working of brains trying to unravel the debates of existence, habits, memory, reality, consciousness, and empathy. This book is Neuroscience 101 and is super-accessible for anyone interested. Plus, it’s humbling to learn about your identity and worldview as a series of electrochemical interactions.
13. In the Company of a Poet: Gulzar in Conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir
    If you grew up in India, Gulzar has been part of your world. He has written lyrics for era-defining songs for a long time. “Lakdi Ki Kathi” is a Gulzar song, and so is “Aane wala Pal”, “Tujhse Naaraz nahi Zindagi”, “Tere bina zindagi se koi” to more recent songs like “Tere bina-Guru”, “Kajra Re”. His words would have been the script for uncountable love stories, his lines would have soothed so many evenings. This book is a conversation with Gulzar and takes you to his early days in Mumbai to his working style, and personal life. Read this book if you want to peek into a writer’s world, a writer whose imagination have painted the world for millions of Indians for decades.
14. Nine Lives
    This book by William Dalrymple tracks nine lives seeped in culture and ancient traditions, standing on a juncture with modern India. Read this book if you find yourself thinking about homogeneity of Indian cities or spent a large part of your life living in cities (in which case you won’t think about homogeneity at all). Read this book if you want to explore the rich tradition and cultural legacy of different parts of India. William Dalrymple, the graceful storyteller that he is, takes you into lives of nine people and showcase the richness of Indian thinking. Meet a Jain nun in Sravanabelagola, a theyyam dancer in Kerala who also works as a manual labourer, devadasis of Northern Karnataka, storytellers of Rajasthan telling story of Pabuji, a Sufi from Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in rural Sindh, a monk from Tibet, an idol-maker in Swamimalai in Tamil Nadu, a Tantric from Calcutta, Baul singer from West Bengal. This book will make you want to travel India, and to talk to all the people in all the different states. It will bring you face to face with the diversity of Indian people, and will show you the absurdity of recent attempts to paint India with a single stroke of overarching religious identity.
15. Capital:A Portrait of Twenty — First Century Delhi
    Delhi of 21st century is a city of contradictions. A city with the political clout and bureaucratic clans, a city with a an elite class with easy money that sprung out of massive jump in real-estate valuations, a city which can almost see the communal violence in the rear-view mirror, a city with budding art scene, and a city with a notion of power that goes beyond money and encapsulates power of access, information and politics. If you have stayed in Delhi or vaguely familiar with it, read this book as Rana Dasgupta brings to your notice the cultural yesterdays being overridden with distasteful urbanity of today, as he confronts a city whose important citizens are isolated from the cultural legacy of the city. From the book, “The scandal of a maid who was asking for her Rs. 2000 monthly salary to be raised to Rs. 3000 was frequently discussed over 3,000 dinners.”. This book is incisive, and incisive books deserve to be read.
16. Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
    If you are fascinated with logistics, read this book. Look around yourself, everything you can see, went from being in their natural state to being transported around the world to take their final shape. The phone/laptop you are using to read this story has components sourced from all over the world, processed all over the world, assembled and then delivered all over the world. When you go out to buy a Starbucks coffee in our neighbourhood, that coffee has already travelled the world to reach to your neighbourhood. Edward Humes takes you through the coffee plantations, to ports, to highways, and to airplanes, to cargo ships, to car accidents, to UPS delivery service, to self-driving cars. This books cover everything transportations and you will be endlessly fascinated with the people and institutions and machines that move the world and create the illusion of ready-availability of everything everywhere.
17. Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products
    Macbook, Iphone, Ipod. Aren’t these products just beautiful. Don’t they just work? Apple is synonymous with Steve Jobs, but Jony Ive is the design guy behind major Apple products. Reading about Jony Ive, you get to know the world of Industrial Designers, and what entails in making beautiful products. Design is not just how it looks, design is how it works. Design is about what material should we use to build casing for macbook and why. Design is building 3D prototypes and then playing with them. Read this book if you want to know Jony Ive and how his team approaches building products and how people approach designing products. You’d marvel at infinite small decisions that you make and thousands of small things you have to get right to make a coherent product. You’d start appreciating products around you. You’d not look at your gadgets in same way after reading this book.
18. Data and Electric Power
    This short book is about role that Data Science can play in Electrical Power industry. From taming the uncertainty of solar and wind power, to load forecasting for electrical utilities, this book looks at next steps in evolution in the way world generates and consumes electrical power.
19. White Magic: A Story of Heartbreak, Hard Drugs and Hope
    “If drugs were the people you met at the party, heroin would be the bitch in the corner, man, just an ageless cold-hearted bitch in a business suit.” Arjun Nath, got hooked to Heroin when he was 21 years old, a corporate lawyer. They say, heroin addiction is one-way road, you can’t give it up, it consumes you, the only escape is death. This story is how Arjun managed to get off the heroin addiction, his almost decade-long struggle. This story is about Doc/Bhai/Dr. Yusuf Merchant, a doctor who runs a rehab near Mumbai, and how he ended up doing that. Arjun smoothly weaves his story and Doc’s story together in alternate chapters and by the time you are finished reading this, you know a little more about love, kindness, depression, addiction and hope.
20. Incarnations : India in 50 lives
    Read this book if you want to go on a pan-India tour spanning centuries, covering states and individuals.
    It attempts to take an objective view of life journey of people who created religions, kingdoms, social/political/cultural movements, discoveries, institutions, artwork and corporations, contributions of which far outsize their individual lifespans. These entities have shaped Indian psyche and reality and will continue to do so. Sunil Khilnani, (to borrow his phrase) has ability to withhold judgement, yet comment on limitations of ideologies and individuals at the time. He tours the lives and circumstances of the people whose contributions are so deeply embedded in current worldview that it’s easy to take them for granted. People profiled date from Buddha to Dhirubhai Ambani.
21. Thinking in Systems: A Primer
    This book is smart, and it points you to the world and shows you everything you have been missing out on. But more importantly, this book is beautiful, exquisite and delightful, in many ways. It connects disparate entities, transcends disciplines and cuts across time-horizons. You come across Buddhist thoughts, insights on industrial economy, corporate governance, capitalism, sustainability, development economics, interpersonal relationships, academic biases, and you keep connecting all the things in your mind that were lying there unconnected.
22. India’s Glocal Leader: Chandrababu Naidu
    This book tracks the life of Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, ex-Chief Minister of united Andhra Pradesh. It tracks his life from early days in politics to climbing the ranks at TDP. Chandrababu Naidu is often credited with putting Hyderabad on global map as IT destination. These days, he’s busy building a state from scratch. Read this book if you want to get a glimpse of regional politics of India. Read what it takes to run a political campaign, to deal with party factions. Read about drivers of regional politics in India, recent history of Telugu politics, balance between inclusive and developmental politics. The author of the book worked as communications officer in Naidu’s CM office.
23. Dreaming Big: My Journey to Connect India
    Read this book if you want to know a guy who has been dabbler and achiever of sorts and had a massive impact on Indian information industry and economy in his unique way. Engineer, Inventor, Entrepreneur, Policymaker, Immigrant, Wanderer, Mission-driven, Indian, you have to know him. Remember those STD/ISD/PCO booths from 90s? Sam Pitroda is the guy who almost single-handedly made that happen in India. And that is only one of his achievements. Sam left for US after schooling in Gujarat, worked on cutting-edge telecom protocols and hardware, started his own company in US, sold it to Cisco, felt he had to come back to India to contribute, came back to India on his personal mission, walked into Indira Gandhi’s office to propose setting up telecom connectivity in India, set-up CDOT, took care of technology transfer, trained Indian engineers, set up local manufacturing partners in India, trained operational staff and put STD/ISD/PCO booths all over India. Went back to US, started another company, came back to India to focus on building knowledge institutions, headed National Knowledge commission and National Innovation Council.
24. Havells: The Untold Story of Qimat Rai Gupta
    Havells is an electrical appliances company in India. Qimat Rai Gupta started as a trader in electrical goods and created a company worth ~$5B. The story starts in Bhagirath place in Old Delhi, a place we frequented to get electrical components for college hobby projects, and mostly based in Delhi. The book is written by his son, Anil Rai Gupta, chronicling the humble start of the company manufacturing and selling MCBs to venturing into luxury fans. Read this book if you want to read about building a company in Delhi and India, dynamics of family-run businesses, brand management strategy for an electrical appliances in company, sponsoring big sporting events like IPL, launching quirky and iconic ad campaigns like “Shock laga”and how that helped them launch entire new categories of premium products and made electrical appliances cool. Reading this book will also make you realise how distribution channel plays a big part in Havells’ success. The book is full of homespun wisdom (as Anil likes to put it) of QRG. Interesting Tidbit : Qimat Rai Gupta says that reading two books changed his perpective forever, (How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill)
25. Dhandha: How Gujaratis Do Business
    This book contains narratives of 4 Gujarati businessmen, engaged in businesses in different sectors and tries to abstract out the common driving principles. The first story is about BhimjiBhai Patel, a diamond businessman, who started as a diamond cutter, slowly learned the ins and outs of diamond processing industry and started a company with his brothers and expanded it. The second story is about Mohanbhai Patel, who moonlighted on setting up his own aluminium collapsible factory while working at Tatas, and became a farmer after retiring from his business. He also founded “Diamond Nagar” in Gujarat. The third story is about DalpatBhai Patel, an engineer who went on to become a motelier in US, and was one of the few first Patels to try their luck in hospitality industry. As of today, 42% of hotels in US are owned by Gujaratis. DalpatBhai Patel went on to become mayor of Mansfield County. The fourth story is about Jaydev Patel, a chemist who dropped his job and became a life insurance agent because it paid better. He put in the work and went on to sell $1 billion worth of policies. He is ranked as one of the most successful agents of all time. The driving principles? Honesty, simplicity, willingness to put in hard work, constant learning, relationship building and sharing what you have.