Month: October 2014

Author: Shirley H. Wray, MD, PhD, FRCP Publisher: Oxford University Press – 437 pages Book Review by: Nano Khilnani Shirley H. Wray has written this book from her experience over several decades as a neurologist and neurophysiologist focused on treating patients with various eye movement disorders. She has also been teaching neurology, besides practicing it. She points out that while eye movement disorders are commonly encountered in practice, they are not that easy to treat and cure, and they bring up many questions that are not easy to find answers for. Dr. Wray writes that she has taken a...

Author: Ravi Venkatesan Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press – 232 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram India is a nation of about 1.27 billion people, the second largest in the world, after China. It has 17.3 percent or almost one-sixth of the world’s population.  In 2013, it had a gross domestic product of $2.047 trillion, the tenth largest in the world. But on a nominal or purchasing power parity basis (local affordability of goods and services relative to people’s incomes) however, it was ranked the third largest economy in the world, with a GDP equivalent of $5,777 trillion. India’s...

Editor: Daniel McGinn Publisher: Harvard Business Review – 319 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram This is a collection of 34 candid essays written in the first person by heads of corporations of various sizes, including some very well-known ones such as Aflac, Amway, Blockbuster, DuPont, Encyclopedia Britannica, Enterprise, General Electric, Google, H.J. Heinz, Honeywell, Marriott, Novartis, Prada, Timberland, and Xerox. Taken from the pages of the Harvard Business Review, the leaders of the companies relate to us some of the most difficult management challenges they faced and what they did. The lay person usually assumes that they did...

Author: Andrew S. Winston Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press – 344 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram A pivot is a moment in your life after an event that could have cost you loss in some way.  A big pivot is that moment in your life after a crucial event that could have cost you your very life. That event could have been a massive heart attack you had. There are usually warning signs around you that things are not going well for you – in whatever area of your life – and you need to do something, to...

A volume in the series Cornell Studies in Security Affairs edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen Walt Author: Jessica L.P. Weeks Publisher: Cornell University Press – 247 pages Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar This is a research, study, and discussion book on dictators, their invasions of territories they want to add to their own, and the different outcomes they get. They get surprisingly different results not only because their personal characteristics vary, but also because their actions and moves are distinct, and the responses of those being attacked are rather unusual and sometimes unexpected. At the...