From establishing a successful career in a small village in Kerala to offering answers to relevant questions in the wake of the aging population and increasing hospital costs, the IANS bookshelf this weekend offers this and more. Take a look.
1. Book: God’s Own Office; Author: James Joseph; Publisher: Portfolio Penguin; Pages: 191; Price: Rs.399.
The part memoir, part how-to narrates the story of how one man worked for a global giant from his village in Kerala.
James Joseph was in his late 30s and well-established in his job as a director with Microsoft, when he went on a family vacation to Aluva, Kerala. It was there when, on tasting a jackfruit, his daughter expressed the desire to taste the fruit from the same tree in their own backyard every year – and his life transformed.
“God’s Own Office is about how I moved from the work life compromise of a big city to the work life resonance of a small town…,” the author wrote on the book’s website.
The book also highlights how he worked from cities in three continents and finally achieved his career-best professional performance, at the global software giant Microsoft, from his village.
Additionally, the book also offers practical tips and techniques for those “frustrated with living in cities”, and tries to give answers to questions like: How to set up a home office? How to integrate with the local community? Where do your kids go to school?
2. Book: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End; Author: Atul Gawande; Publisher: Penguin; Pages: 283; Price: Rs.599.
Massachusetts-based author Atul Gawande through his book tries to highlight increasingly relevant questions like: are doctors never taught how to prepare people
to die, like they are trained to keep their patients alive as long as possible? And should the medical profession rethink its approach towards the terminally ill for whom death is a question of when, if not.
Author of three best-selling books, Gawande argues that an “acceptance of mortality must lie at the center of the way we treat the dying” and describes the book to be the modern experience of mortality.
In the introduction to his book, he writes: “You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit.”
3. Book: The Song of the Magpie Robin, A memoir; Author: Zafar Futehally with Shanthi Chandola and Ashish Chandola; Publisher: Rainlight, Rupa; Pages: 197; Price: Rs.500.
Naturalist and writer Zafar Futehally grew up in the Mumbai suburb of Andheri but found his “true calling” with ornithologist Salim Ali, also known as the Birdman of India, while accompanying him on his expeditions and helping him ring birds, collect specimens and take notes.
It was on such field trips that the author, who was awarded Padma Shri in 1970, came in contact with many naturalists and conservationists who helped him develop a “nuanced, far-ranging understanding of ornithology as well as of the natural world” and helped him in his role as one of the pioneers of the Indian conservation
movement.
Peppered with images and personal stories, the memoir is a light read sketching the portrait of the “man of principle who spent his entire life striving to find balance between development and nature conservation”.
4. Book: Making Dreams Come True: Tech Mahindra Foundation; Author: Vinod C. Khanna; Publisher: Portfolio, Penguin; Pages: 260; Price: Rs.599.
The Tech Mahindra Foundation (TMF), in just over five years of its existence, has helped better the lives of many underprivileged children and youth, by providing them educational opportunities – from primary schooling to vocational training.
The book traces the journey of the private foundation, which has played a significant role in contributing to the country’s most important goal with the hope that it will be an “inspiration and a road map for those who believe that profits and social good can and must go hand in hand and that creating shared value is the road to future business success”.