I Have a Dream

Author:        Rashmi Bansal

Published:  2011

Publisher:   Westland Ltd.

Paperback: 350 Pages

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Having posted 100 odd book reviews/summaries in this blog, I get to write  my first commissioned book review !  Blogadda sent this book to me under their Books Review Program.  It offered a carrot (I get to keep this book for free!) and also wielded a stick (a 500+ words review should be posted within 7 days of receipt of the book in order to continue being considered for the future reviews program!).

So I put aside  the other two books  which I was in midst of reading  and confined my  reading to this book alone. Anything to get a good book free! I was sure that it will be a good book to possess since I had bought and read Rashmi Bansal's earlier book "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" where she has narrated the stories of 25 IIM Graduates who took the hard road of entrepreneurship rather than take up  high-paying jobs which they could have easily got..
 

In this book she introduces us to 20 social entrepreneurs. 
According to Wikipedia "A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture)."The stories of the social entrepreneurs featured in this book are classified under 3 sections - Rainmakers, Change Makers, Spiritual Capitalist

Rainmakers set up social enterprises which generate revenues. However profit generation is not their primary motive.
Featured in this section are:

• Bindeshwar Phatak , the  founder of  Sulabh International which brought a revolution in toilets and a rightful place in society for  those who once cleaned them.
• Anita Ahuja whose program Conserve India  employs ragpickers to collect plastic waste, which is then recycled to create export quality handbags.
• Vineet Rai who has set up a micro-venture fund called Aavishkaar for rural entrepreneurs.
• Sumita Ghose who runs Rangasutra, a for-profit venture which sources crafts and textiles from villages and retails through Fabindia.
• Saloni Malhotra who brought technology and business to rural India in form of DesiCrew our country's first rural BPO.
• Ishita Khanna who through Spiti Ecosphere promotes eco-tourism and berry processing in Spiti.
• Harish Hande whose company Selco makes appropriate and affordable solar lighting system for villages.
• Santosh Parulekar who runs a unique social enterprise Pipal Tree, which transforms poorly educated rural youth to highly skilled construction workers.
• Dinabandhu Sahoo who through Project Chilika has trained villagers in Orissa in a profitable sea weed farming technique.
• Anand Kumar of Super 30 who tutors poor but meritorious students for IIT JEEE.
• Dhruv Lakra who invested in a courier service Mirakle Couriers which employs deaf people.

Changemakers are. the ones who instead of complaining about a bad social situation take a small step towards making it good.
Featured in this section are:

• Madhav Chavan who has made 'education' his life's mission by setting up Pratham,  which works for better education of millions of children across India.
• Anshu Gupta whose organization Goonj ensures that donated old clothes are systematically collected, sorted and mended  to ensure that the clothes distributed are the most approriate ones for the persons in need.
• Trilochan Shastry of Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) whose courageous act of filing a PIL led to a landmark judgement from Supreme Court which requires from the politicians standing in elections to declare their assets and criminal records.
• Shaheen Mistri whose project Akansha is doing a yeoman service in educating 3500 slum children through 58 centers and 6 schools.
• Arvind Kejriwal whose campaign Parivartan pioneered the use of RTI (Right to Information Act) to empower citizens of our country. Now very much known as the right-hand man of social crusader Anna Hazare.
• Bhusan Punani who has tirelessly worked for Blind Person's Association (BPA) to transform it from a single, small school and vocational center for the blind to a multi-campus, multi-purpose movement to bring dignity to the life of the disabled.

Spiritual Capitalists are the individuals who choose to live by the ideal of service because they believe purity of purpose and selflessness of spirit can transcend every limitation
This section features:

• Madhu Pandit Dasa who as head of ISKCON Bangalore initiated the Akshaya Patra movement which combines missionary zeal and modern management to feed 1 million hungry children every day.
• Vinayak Lohani who has established and runs Parivaar Ashram a residential facility for orphans, tribals and daughters of prostitutes.
• Shreesh Jadhav who chose the path of renunciation to become a monk at Belur Math where he works as a registrar of Vivekananda University and also teaches .

Each and every story is an inspiration written in a very simple language which all of us can connect to. It is very touching to note that these entrepreneurs  are highly educated and could have earned lots of money in the corporate world either as an employee or as business entrepreneurs. Yet they choose social entrepreneurship because they strongly believed in serving others. After each story there is a section called "Advice to the Young Entrepreneurs" which summarizes the philosophy and message of the featured entrepreneur.  

Another useful section is  "Start up Resources" at the end of the book. This provides us the email ids of each entrepreneur and the links to the website of their respective organization (except those of  Dhruv Lakra & Madhav Chavan). This will enable the readers who are inspired by their stories to contact them easily for any advice or to contribute to their cause.

This book does have certain limitations though...

• Story of Shreesh Jadhav somehow does not fit in this book. While it is a very remarkable and courageous decision of  an IIT graduate to lead a life of a monk, and work as a registrar and faculty member in an institution run by Belur Math, the entrepreneurial aspect of this venture is not evident.
• While it is the author's prerogative to decide whom to feature in this book, I can't help observing that only two entrepreneurs featured in this book are from South India. This lead me  to question - Does  South India lacks such social entrepreneurs worth featuring in this book or whether the author is not aware of their initiatives. A balanced selection of social entrepreneurs drawn from all over India would have avoided such question.
• Liberal doses of  Hindi sentences are sprinkled in this book without translations. As far as I am concerned, since I know Hindi well, I could enjoy the punch ,humor and authenticity generated by these sentences. However such a writing style alienates readers who don't understand Hindi. Author should not presume that the readers know Hindi well and provide translated text wherever long sentences in Hindi are employed.
• The URL of the book's website is wrongly mentioned on the back cover as http://www.ihaveadream.in. The correct URL  is http://www.ihaveadreambook.in/ 

Apart from the above mentioned limitations which will be hopefully get corrected in forthcoming editions, the stories of the people featured in this book are a very inspiring read for anyone (and not just  for the aspiring entrepreneurs.!)  who at times gets overwhelmed by difficult circumstances.

Useful Links:

• The Book's Website
• Excerpts - from the stories of Bindeshwar Pathak (Sulabh International) and Anita Ahuja (Conserve India)
• Full Text and Video of Martin Luther's Speech  "I Have a Dream" - which inspired the title of this book. 

[This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!]

The Doctor, The Detective & Arthur Conan Doyle

Author:         Martin Booth
Published:   1997
Publisher:    Hodder and Stoughton
Hardcover:  384 pages

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A fascinating biography of  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  who got overshadowed by his fictional yet very realistic creation the ace detective Sherlock Holmes.
The author Martin Booth brings out the multifaceted personality  and talent of Conan Doyle in a very convincing manner.  
He enlightens us on several little-known facts about Conan Doyle -  how  apart from being the author of Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle was an author of several books of different genres - historical novels, war stories, sports, science fiction (The Lost World),  a military doctor, a war correspondent, a spiritualist, boxer, a first-class cricket player  (see his first-class record at Cricinfo ) who played against the legendary W.G. Grace, and a worker for social justice. 
Of course the background behind the plots and characters of several Sherlock Holmes stories is also dealt with at length.
All these make this book a very interesting read.
The book also has a fairly good selection of photographs of  Conan Doyle, his family and friends, the places associated with him. We also have a photograph of Dr. Joseph Bell who was the main inspiration behind the creation of Sherlock Holmes.
However the book lacks a complete consolidated list of all the works of Conan Doyle. That would have been very useful.
However on the whole I enjoyed reading this book  that  awakened in me a desire to re-read Sherlock Holmes stories and other books by Conan Doyle.


Link:
An audio recording of Conan Doyle's voice - Here he describes about the origins of Sherlock Holmes and  his interest in Spiritualism.

Madhouse: True Stories of the Inmates of Hostel 4 IITB

Editors:       Urmilla Deshpande, Bakul Desai
Published:    2010
Publisher:    Westland Ltd.
Paperback: 358 pages



Almost everybody  who has lived in a college hostel  will say that those were the best years in his/her life. We nostalgically remember those days and talk about it when we happen to meet our hostel mates after a long time. But the inmates of Hostel 4 IITB (Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai) have gone beyond just remembering and talking about their tenure in the hostel. They have collaborated to collect their reminiscences and create a book out of it. And they managed to convince a professional author Urmilla Deshpande who happens to be one of the inmate's wife, to edit the book.


The result is a book that is authentic, hilarious and takes you back to the good old days in a student's hostel. The anecdotes in this book are roughly from the period 1975-85, when the life was not gadget driven like the present times. They strike a chord with any hosteler since they touch upon areas like - Ragging, Inter-hostel competitions, Smoking & Boozing sessions, friendly pranks and fights, Hostel Mess, Movies (Clean & Pornos), Music, Girls & Games - which one can easily relate too. I can vouch for it because I myself had been a hostelite (though not in IIT-B) during that era.


There are some unusual and unique stories also - for e.g. a Arun Kaul  riding a horse to go to attend lectures; another one is about  Bakul Desai meeting   the don Vardarajan Mudaliar to organize an elephant for an inter-hostel competition.


Manohar Parriker (ex- CM of Goa), Madhu Pandit Dasa (President, ISKCON-Bangalore) and Subrah Iyar (Founder  & CEO - Webex) are some of the distinguished inmates of the Hostel 4 IITB.  Reading about  their exploits during their hostel life makes an interesting reading, especially the one about Madhu Pandit Dasa's travel in a suburban train.


It would have been better if this book had a short title for every anecdote (some anecdotes do have them) and an index of  names of the persons mentioned in the anecdotes. This would have made locating the portions you want to read much easier. And believe me many of the stories are worth a re-read !


Maybe some enterprising guy can make a movie out of this book too. It might give the blockbuster 3 Idiots a tough competition.


Overall a MUST READ book for anyone who had lived in a student's hostel ! I thoroughly enjoyed it. 


P.S. I only wish I and my batchmates from KREC 1984 batch also get together to write such a book. Surely we will also have lots of similar interesting tales to tell !


Links:

• Madhouse Musings - This blog has some stories which did not make it to the book, but nevertheless gives a you a feel of what to expect in the book

Succeeding with Agile

Author:        Mike Cohn
Published:    2010
Publisher:     Dorling  Kindersley India Pvt. Ltd.
Paperback: 504 pages

Scrum is a deceptively simple agile framework for developing software products in a complex and dynamically changing environment. Theoretically understanding the framework is easy but successfully implementing and reaping the benefits is not.
This book by Mike Cohn aims to provide you the know-how to "Succeed with Agile" (or to be more precise "with Scrum") based on his 15-years experience in implementing Scrum.
This is not an introductory book on Agile or Scrum. It assumes that the reader already knows the fundamentals of Scrum and tried his hands in implementing the same.


The book is organized in Five Parts as follows:


Part I : Getting Started - advice on whether to start small or take a big bang approach; how to create awareness and sense of need for implementing Scrum and subsequently developing the ability to do it; and how to select initial projects and teams, establishing improvement communities and improvement backlogs. 


Part II: Individuals - the changes  that each individual needs to make as part of the process of adopting Scrum; the type of resistance some individuals may exhibit;  thinking about why someone is resistant; guidance on how to help the person get past the resistance; the new roles that exist on a Scrum project and the changes necessary in the traditional roles; some of the technical practices (continuous integration, pair programming, test-driven development, and so on) that should be piloted and introduced to change for better the day-to-day work approach of the individuals. 


Part III:  Teams -  how to structure teams to best achieve the benefits of Scrum; nature of teamwork on a Scrum project; what it means to lead a self- organizing Scrum team; specific advice for what ScrumMasters, functional  managers, and other leaders can do to help a team self-organize for success; changes teams should make to work effectively with a product backlog; need for the whole team to work together to ensure that a sprint's goals are met; planning challenges faced by the teams; advice on separating estimates created by a team from the commitments the team makes.


Part IV: The Organization -  what is necessary to scale Scrum up to work on large, multi-team projects; dealing with complexities of distributed teams; how to make Scrum work when part of the project uses a sequential process or when there are compliance or governance requirements; special considerations of the impact of Scrum on an organization’s human resources, facilities, and project management office groups.


Part V: Next Steps - various approaches to measure how far an organization has progressed in becoming agile; need for continuous improvement to maintain agility.


In most of the twenty-two chapters of this book Cohn organizes his advice on overcoming some universally common problems faced during Agile/Scrum journey  as "Things to Try Now" and "Objection".


Things to Try Now - Recreates the pieces of advice which the author found himself giving most often to his clients or that was most helpful in particular situations. Over 100 Things to Try Out !


Objection - Reproduces  typical objections (around 60 ! )  raised on Scrum/Agile   during author's  training/consulting sessions and author's counter arguments.


Each chapter has a section on Additional Reading which goes beyond just citing the references. Against most of the cited reference  Cohn provides a succinct 2-3 summary of the reference. This helps the reader in choosing the appropriate reference for further reading.


On the whole a very useful and handy guide book for Agile/Scrum implementers at all levels in an organization.  I was lucky enough to get it as a complimentary copy during the Certified ScrumMaster training I attended last month ! Have started reading it all over again !

The Code Book

Author:      Simon Singh
Published:  1999
Publisher:   Fourth Estate Limited
Hardcover: 416 pages

The need for information security which is  widely recognized in this Internet Age is not a new need at all. It,though not as pervasive as today,  has existed for thousands of years and has a fascinating history of its own.


The high risk of secret and confidential messages sent by kings, queens and army generals falling into the  hand's of the enemies led  to the development of codes and ciphers. This heralded the birth of  Cryptography which is a method of disguising a message in a manner that only the intended recipient can read it. To counter Cryptography the unauthorized message interceptors worked on breaking the code. Thus evolved the science and art of codebreaking i.e. Cryptanalysis.


So the entire history of cryptography is the story of ongoing battle between Cryptographers (code makers) and Cryptanalysts (code breakers). And this story - right from the origin of ciphers in ancient Greece till the recent advances (till 1999) in Quantum Cryptography- is brilliantly narrated by Simon Singh in this book.


Singh mentions in the introduction to the book the two main objectives of his writing this book.
The first one is to chart the evolution of  codes. He describes how the battle between codemakers and code breakers involved diverse range of disciplines like mathematics, linguistics, information theory, quantum theory etc. and their associated technologies and inspired a series of remarkable scientific breakthroughs. He also enthralls us with " stories of political intrigue and tales of life and death to illustrate the key turning points in the evolution of codes", just to mention a few - the Babington Plot, the unbroken Beale Cipher, cracking of the Enigma code by  Alan Turing (of the well known Turing Test fame), decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics through Rosetta Stone.
The second objective of the author is to demonstrate how the subject of cryptography is as relevant today as it was before. Apart from providing one of  the best explanation I have ever come across of the prevalent encryption algorithms , standards and techniques  like DES, RSA, PGP, he explores the promising Quantum cryptography which can lead to unbreakable ciphers. He also discusses the debate between two schools of thought - one which lobbies for  restricting   the use of cryptography to ensure law enforcement and national security and the one which presses for its widespread use to protect the privacy of the individual.


This book also introduces us to the tireless cryptographers and cryptanalysts who had to remain anonymous  and never gained public recognition during their lifetimes. This was due to the politically or militarily sensitive nature of their contributions and inventions which could not be disclosed to public.
For example, by 1975, James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson working for Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had discovered all the fundamental aspects of public-key cryptography. Yet they all had to remain silent since their work was a classified information. They had to sit back and watch as Rivest, Shamir and Adleman the researchers in MIT rediscovered their discoveries over the next three years and became famous in cryptographic circles for their RSA algorithm.
Similarily during Second World War, the work of Max Newman and Tommy Flowers resulted in development of Colossus machine in Britain. Colossus was a precursor to the modern digital computer. Yet it was destroyed after the war and those who worked on it were forbidden to talk about it. This secrecy on the part of British Government meant that Eckert and Mauchly of the University of Pennsylvania got the credit for the invention of the first digital computer- ENIAC.


The technical concepts in this book are very lucidly explained and should no pose problems for a lay reader. Also an extensive list of further readings has been provided for the readers who seek more details. 


One of the most interesting books I have read this year. It has sparked an interest for Cryptography in me. Hence strongly recommend it as an introductory book on history and concepts of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis !


Useful Links:
Cryptography section of the author's website which has :

• information about the TV series based on this book (The Science of Secrecy)
• some cryptograms(coded messages) for you to try and crack
•  a free downloadable CD-ROM version of The Code Book.

An Interesting Trivia from the Book:
Alan Turing (of the well known Turing Test fame) was conceived in the autumn of 1911 in India, where his father was a member of Indian civil service. His parents were determined that their child should be born in Britain, and returned to London, where Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912 !

India A History : From the Earliest Civilisation to the Boom of the Twenty-first Century

Author:       John Keay

Published:   2010

Publisher:    Harper Collins

Paperback:  688 Pages

Documenting the history of our country India - the ancient, diverse, multi-cultural, complex, motherland of ours - even in a voluminous book of  almost 700 pages is next to impossible. The author has admirably overcome this challenge and done precisely that. He presents to us a very  impartial and unbiased history of India right from Harappan civilization till the present day IT boom.

It is almost like reading a fascinating story or watching a well-made documentary. However the narration of post-independence history is somewhat dry as compared to the pre-independence history. But it is quite informative especially about the post-partition internal politics of Pakistan and Bangladesh which I was not much aware of.

The text is well supported by over 60 photographs of historical monuments and events and about100 tables, charts and maps to enable better understanding and appreciation.

I feel with some editing to simplify the text , this book can be used as a textbook in high schools too. 

I would recommend this highly readable book for everyone who during their school days  branded Indian history as a dull subject . 

The author through this book clearly demonstrates that  it need not be so.

 

Browse inside this book.

Twenty-six Ways of Looking At a Blackberry

Author:        John Simmons

Published:    2009

Publisher:    A&C Black Publishers Ltd.

Paperback: 240 Pages

If you think this book is about Blackberry (TM) the smartphone or the blackberry the fruit, read no further. It is about neither.

But hold on ! If you are interested in creative writing then this book (and hopefully my summary of it in this blog post !) is definitely worth a read. It is certainly one of the stand-apart  books  which I have come across.

The author John Simmons is of the view that even a dull, matter of fact business writing can be transformed into a more expressive and adventurous form of writing. The transformed piece may not convey precisely all the information and the same meaning. But it may establish better emotional connectivity with the reader and achieve the same goal as that of the original piece.

To demonstrate this the author first creates a base text -  the opening pages of an annual report of a fictitious technology company. The base text uses the standard business jargon-  sales, profits, future plans etc.

He rewrites this piece in 26 different styles that include Pronoun Shift, Fairy Tale, Questions, Style of Dickens, Six-word Stories, Alliteration, Song Lyrics, Eight-word Sentences, Greek Myth, Graphic Novel, Shakespearean Sonnet, Newspaper Article, Letter to a Friend, Blues, Detective Fiction, Democratic Campaign Speech, Lists, Haiku etc.

The nuances of creative writing are brought out in a very lucid manner using  these rewritten pieces and many  other examples drawn from author's career as a brand management consultant. 

A must read book for all business communicators like brand managers, marketers, advertisers, copywriters, PR people and also for anyone interested in creative writing !