Book Summaries

The book is 50% story of Jobs and 50% history of the Valley. From the beginning of Apple to it becoming the world’s most valuable company, the book covers everything in depth (and is a bit too long) Some of the key things in the book are Steve Job’s fruitarian diet, journey to India, love for absolute minimalism, extreme (positive as well as negative) treatment of employees, relation with Bill Gates (and Microsoft), battle with Google, battle with cancer and a strong belief that normal rules simply don’t apply to him. The book covers a few major ideas including iTunes store (which brought music online), making of Toy Story, development of iPhone and iPad in detail. At several points, the author clearly illustrates that Apple’s designers and NOT engineers make the rules, for example, during the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco. Overall, it was a nice read, especially, when reading it along with In the Plex which is about Google. ...

An amazing book which describes Google’s journey right from its beginning in the Stanford dorm. The author interviewed several top echelons of Google and presented several interesting insider anecdotes and stories of Google.

The book presents a generalists view of post-independent India. Unlike India Unbound, this book focuses primarily on post-independent India and takes a more pragmatic approach towards understanding the problems of contemporary India. The best parts of the book are the interesting contradictions that the nation went through - love/hate relationship with the English language, fear of technology, and neglected urban development.

The book talks about a set of habits which differentiates successful people from the normal. It criticizes [recently popular] personality ethic which it terms as deceptive and manipulative and calls for character ethic which is a fundamental change in human character. This change must begin from inside and spreads out [inside-out] and the reverse is not possible.

The book compares a set of 17 companies that are considered visionary with similar 17 companies of lesser stature. I am avoiding gory details of their methodology here. To derive theory from practice, the book aims at debunking common myths about visionary companies.

The book is divided primarily into three parts, the pre-independence era [focused on the British Raj including some stories of the Mughal period], the post-independence pre-liberalized era, and post-liberalized India. The author was born in 1943 in West Punjab, which is now under the occupation of Pakistan. The author narrates his personal experiences of the economic conditions of India from 1947-2001.

The book interprets events in Mahabharata while trying to draw parallels from the contemporary world. Following are the key takeaways based on my understanding of the book. I am assuming some familiarity with the story of Mahabharata.