Profile Of: Sujith Nair

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Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking
Book Name: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking
SubTitle:
Author Name: Susan Cain
Book Description: Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie’s birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical megachurch, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects. She talks to Asian-American students who feel alienated from the brash, backslapping atmosphere of American schools. She questions the dominant values of American business culture, where forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and where the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. And she draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience to reveal the surprising differences between extroverts and introverts. (Amazon)
Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth
Book Name: Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth
SubTitle:
Author Name: Navi Radjou,Jaideep Prabhu,Simone Ahuja
Book Description: Jugaad Innovation throws cold water in the faces of CEOs, reminding them of the immense power of grassroots, do-it-yourself, cheap, quick, simple innovation. This is one of the most important lessons that emerging markets are teaching the West. - George F. Colony, CEO, Forrester Research
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves
Book Name: The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves
SubTitle:
Author Name: Dan Ariely
Book Description: Dan Ariely ingeniously and delightfully teases out how people balance truthfulness with cheating to create a reality out of wishful-blindness reality. You’ll develop a deeper understanding of your own personal ethics—and those of everybody you know. (Mehmet Oz, MD, Vice-Chair and Professor of Surgery at Columbia University )
Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
Book Name: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
SubTitle:
Author Name: Tim Harford
Book Description: Adapt is a highly readable, even entertaining, argument against top-down design. It debunks the Soviet-Harvard command-and-control style of planning and approach to economic policies and regulations and vindicates trial and error (particularly the error part) as a means to economic and general progress. Very impressive! —Nassim N. Taleb
Civilization: The West and the Rest
Book Name: Civilization: The West and the Rest
SubTitle:
Author Name: Niall Ferguson
Book Description: What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications" that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy. "Civilization" takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world - from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; and, from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history.
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Book Name: Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
SubTitle:
Author Name: Michael Lewis
Book Description: Mr. Lewis’s ability to find people who can see what is obvious to others only in retrospect or who somehow embody something larger going on in the financial world is uncanny. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today’s headlines about Europe’s growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world.” (New York Times )
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Book Name: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
SubTitle:
Author Name: Richard Bach
Book Description: In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders...until he meets Donald Shimoda--former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar.... In Illusions, the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar...that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them... and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places--like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves. (Found inside book flap).
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Book Name: Einstein: His Life and Universe
SubTitle:
Author Name: Walter Isaacson
Book Description: As a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. --Anne Bartholomew (Amazon)
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Book Name: Thinking, Fast and Slow
SubTitle:
Author Name: Daniel Kahneman
Book Description: In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions. (Amazon)
Liars Poker
Book Name: Liars Poker
SubTitle:
Author Name: Michael Lewis
Book Description: Lewis takes the reader through his schoolboy's progress as trainee and geek in the trading room, to high-powered swashbuckler. The author has a puckish appreciation for the comic. Yet he also has the knack of explaining precisely how complex deals really work. He provides the most readable explanation I've seen anywhere of the origin within Salomon Brothers of the mortgage-backed securities market....It is good history, and a good story. (National Review )
Steve Jobs
Book Name: Steve Jobs
SubTitle:
Author Name: Walter Isaacson
Book Description: A quote from Jobs that is in the book -- I hate it when people call themselves entrepreneurs when what they are really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be.
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Book Name: Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
SubTitle:
Author Name: Tony Hsieh
Book Description: Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh talks about his life as an entrepreneur and the life of Zappos, a company with a culture that is all about delivering happiness to its customers and employees. From a company struggling to survive to a hugely profitable company that was acquired by Amazon and still manages to retain its individual touch, the story will touch you in more ways than you can think. Running in parallel are Tony’s own realizations and lessons which will move you and act as validations for your own thoughts if you’ve ever thought about your work having a higher purpose and a cause than just making a buck.
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Book Name: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
SubTitle:
Author Name: Sarah Bakewell
Book Description: “This charming biography shuffles incidents from Montaigne’s life and essays into twenty thematic chapters…Bakewell clearly relishes the anthropological anecdotes that enliven Montaigne’s work, but she handles equally well both his philosophical influences and the readers and interpreters who have guided the reception of the essays.” —The New Yorker
The Happiness Advantage
Book Name: The Happiness Advantage
SubTitle: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
Author Name: Shawn Achor
Book Description: Happiness at your workplace is not just a soft advantage. Shawn Achor has done his extensive research of happiness at workplace and the serious hard advantages it brings to the table. From changes in performance of employees whose managers prime them for success to how the rates of the students change over time when teachers have been falsely primed to believe these students are amazing when they are just borderline average this book has surveys and experiments which may not tell you things you do not already know but will definitely tell you how wrong you were about the magnitude of the advantages happiness brings to your organization and your life.
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
Book Name: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
SubTitle:
Author Name: Francis Fukuyama
Book Description: The evolving tension between private and public animates this magisterial history of the state. In his hominids-to-guillotines chronicle of humanity's attempts to build strong, accountable governments that adhere to the rule of law, international relations scholar Fukuyama advances two themes: the effort to create an impersonal state free from family and tribal allegiances, and the struggle—often violent—against wealthy elites who capture the state and block critical reforms.
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
Book Name: The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
SubTitle:
Author Name: Ori Brafman,Rod A. Beckstrom
Book Description: The title metaphor conveys the core concept: though a starfish and a spider have similar shapes, their internal structure is dramatically different—a decapitated spider inevitably dies, while a starfish can regenerate itself from a single amputated leg. In the same way, decentralized organizations, like the Internet, the Apache Indian tribe and Alcoholics Anonymous, are made up of many smaller units capable of operating, growing and multiplying independently of each other, making it very difficult for a rival force to control or defeat them. Despite familiar examples—eBay, Napster and the Toyota assembly line, for example—there are fresh insights, such as the authors' three techniques for combating a decentralized competitor (drive change in your competitors' ideology, force them to become centralized or decentralize yourself). (Amazon)
Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11
Book Name: Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11
SubTitle:
Author Name: Syed Saleem Shahzad
Book Description: A myriad of authors, journalists, academics and analysts have attempted to analyze what drives Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and fighters. Syed Saleem Shahzad is the only one to have gone to their strongholds and asked them. Shahzad, a Pakistani investigative reporter, has a level of access to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that Western journalists can only dream of. He has interviewed many top-level strategists and fighters in both movements on multiple occasions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jordan. In Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban he uses first-hand accounts and his own local knowledge to build up a convincing picture of the aims and motivation of the leaders and fighters in radical Islamic movements. This is a version of the "war on terror" that has never been told. It will fascinate anyone concerned with the strategy and tactics of the most controversial Islamic movements.
The China Study
Book Name: The China Study
SubTitle: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health
Author Name: T. Colin Campbell,Thomas M. Campbell II
Book Description: Quote from the book - What protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer? Casein, which makes up 87% of cow's milk.... This book is written by someone raised on a dairy farm and someone who spent his life trying to prove that the american diet is the way to go...Amazing findings, has the potential to change what your breakfast, lunch and dinner...
The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression
Book Name: The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression
SubTitle:
Author Name: Bruce Barnbaum
Book Description: the most readable, understandable, and complete textbook on photography. With well over 100 beautiful photographic illustrations in both black-and-white and color, as well as numerous charts, graphs, and tables, this book presents the world of photography to beginner, intermediate, and advanced photographers seeking to make a personal statement through the medium of photography. Without talking down to anyone, or talking over anyone's head, Barnbaum presents "how to" techniques for both traditional and digital approaches. Yet he goes well beyond the technical, as he delves deeply into the philosophical, expressive, and creative aspects of photography so often avoided in other books. (Amazon)
The Great American Stickup
Book Name: The Great American Stickup
SubTitle: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street
Author Name: Robert Scheer
Book Description: Following Ronald Reagan' s obsession with the radical deregulation of financial markets through its apotheosis under the Clinton administration to Obama' s reform efforts--which rely, oddly enough, on Clinton cronies to clean up (and profit from) the mess they made--Scheer (The Pornography of Power) proves that, when it comes to the ruling sway of money power, Democrats and Republicans, Wall Street and Washington make very agreeable bedfellows. Scheer names names (Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Alan Greenspan), while praising those who sounded the alarm and underscoring the foreseeable results of putting Wall Street in the driver' s seat. What grew in this regulatory vacuum, Scheer shows, was a global casino, a mind-bendingly enormous and arcane system of gambling on new financial products worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. By 2007, when the house of cards collapsed, Wall Street alone understood what it had wrought while its government partners remained clueless.
The Negative (The New Ansel Adams Photography Series, Book 2)
Book Name: The Negative (The New Ansel Adams Photography Series, Book 2)
SubTitle:
Author Name: Ansel Adams,Robert Baker
Book Description: The Negative is the second volume in the acclaimed and highly influential The Ansel Adams Photography Series. This second volume is anchored by a detailed discussion of Adams' Zone System and his seminal concept of visualization. It presents detailed discussion of artificial and natural light, film and exposure, and darkroom equipment and techniques. Numerous examples of Adams' work clarify the principles discussed. Handsomely illustrated with photographs by Adams as well as instructive line drawings, this classic manual can dramatically improve your photography (Amazon)
The Four Steps to the Epiphany
Book Name: The Four Steps to the Epiphany
SubTitle:
Author Name: Steven Gary Blank
Book Description: Highly recommended product marketing and sales book by founder of E.phiphany (Steve Blank, http://steveblank.com/about/)
First, Break All the Rules: What the Worlds Greatest Managers Do Differently
Book Name: First, Break All the Rules: What the Worlds Greatest Managers Do Differently
SubTitle:
Author Name: Marcus Buckingham,Curt Coffman
Book Description: There are many suggested rules for managers. This books tells you why you shouldn't follow them. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman study the best of the managers around the globe to observe what makes them the best. How the react to situations, how they manage human beings, what they do and what they do not. The one thing common that they find is that most effective managers often break all conventional rules of management. The book is a classic example of research explained in a compelling and engrossing way.
Photographic Composition
Book Name: Photographic Composition
SubTitle:
Author Name: Tom Grill,Mark Scanlon
Book Description: A book that explains composition in detail.
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
Book Name: The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
SubTitle:
Author Name: Dan Ariely
Book Description: Ariely (Predictably Irrational) expands his research on behavioral economics to offer a more positive and personal take on human irrationality's implications for life, business, and public policy. After a youthful accident left him badly scarred and facing grueling physical therapy, Ariely's treatment required him to accept temporary pain for long-term benefit—a trade-off so antithetical to normal human behavior that it sparked the author's fascination with why we consistently fail to act in our own best interest. The author, professor of behavioral economics at Duke, leads us through experiments that reveals such idiosyncrasies as the IKEA effect (if you build something, pride and sentimental attachment are likely to give you an inflated sense of its quality) and the Baby Jessica effect (why we respond to one person's suffering but not to the suffering of many). (amazon).
Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five
Book Name: Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five
SubTitle:
Author Name: John Medina
Book Description: In his New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina showed us how our brains really work—and why we ought to redesign our workplaces and schools. Now, in Brain Rules for Baby, he shares what the latest science says about how to raise smart and happy children from zero to 5. This book is destined to revolutionize parenting. Brain Rules for Baby bridges the gap between what scientists know and what parents practice. Through fascinating and funny stories, Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and dad, unravels how a child’s brain develops--and what you can do to optimize it (amazon).
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Dont
Book Name: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Dont
SubTitle:
Author Name: Jim Collins
Book Description: Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. (amazon). A book on leadership and organizational culture that will change your ideas on forming and nurturing organizations.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Book Name: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
SubTitle:
Author Name: Dan Ariely
Book Description: A book in which he challenges readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are--how we repeat them again and again. I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them" (wikipedia).
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
Book Name: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
SubTitle:
Author Name: Al Ries, Jack Trout
Book Description: Witty and fast-paced, this book spells out how to position a leader so that it gets into the mind and stays there, position a follower in a way that finds a 'hole' not occupied by the leader, and avoid the pitfalls of letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning reveals the fascinating case histories and anecdotes behind the campaigns of many stunning successes and failures in the world of advertising (amazon).
A Peoples History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
Book Name: A Peoples History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
SubTitle:
Author Name: by Howard Zinn
Book Description: A People's History of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Howard Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that spans American history from Christopher Columbus's arrival to an afterword on the Clinton presidency. (amazon). This book presents history from an almost unheard perspective.
Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
Book Name: Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
SubTitle:
Author Name: Matthew Syed
Book Description: Interesting read, some content may be duplicated but worth a read- on the lines of outliers by Gladwell.
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
Book Name: Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
SubTitle:
Author Name: Hugh MacLeod
Book Description: A humorous yet deep and insightful book on creativity and creative endeavors. From Sex and Cash theory to the funny cartoons in the book, the book is not just funny, but hugely inspirational for anyone who wants to start his own creative endeavors. Coming from an author who specializes in the strange art form of drawing cartoons behind business cards, this book has a few old ideas and a few new ones but what is truly new about this book is the refreshing perspective in which these ideas are explained and shared.
The Blank Slate
Book Name: The Blank Slate
SubTitle: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Author Name: Steven Pinker
Book Description: Pinker claims that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn't require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn't require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn't require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being overturned by future empirical discoveries; and that belief in a blank slate human nature encourages destructive social trends such as persecution of the successful and totalitarian social engineering. (Wikipedia)
The Big Short
Book Name: The Big Short
SubTitle: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Author Name: Michael Lewis
Book Description: Here is a quote from this book- read the book about the "Big Short" if you like this quote- even if you don't particularly care about sub prime mortgages, CDO's and the financial crisis . "When a Wall Street firm helped him to get into a trade that seemed perfect in every way, he asked the salesman, "I appreciate this, but I just want to know one thing: How are you going to fuck me?" Heh-heh-heh, c'mon, we'd never do that, the trader started to say, but Danny, though perfectly polite, was insistent. We both know that unadulterated good things like this trade don't just happen between little hedge funds and big Wall Street firms. I'll do it, but only after you explain to me how you are going to fuck me. And the salesman explained how he was going to fuck him. And Danny did the trade."
Blink
Book Name: Blink
SubTitle: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Author Name: Malcolm Gladwell
Book Description: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious; mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. It considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgment, and its pitfalls such as stereotypes. (wikipedia)
What the Dog Saw
Book Name: What the Dog Saw
SubTitle: And Other Adventures
Author Name: Malcolm Gladwell
Book Description: A compilation of Malcolm’s articles published in The New Yorker, the book is a collection of articles basically covering “the Problem of Other Minds” where Gladwell tries to show his readers the world through the eyes of others. The book gets its title from the story of Cesar Millan taming the wildest of dogs with his touch. While most are busy wondering how Milan tames the dogs, Gladwell is more interested in finding out What the Dog sees and why the dog decides to mellow down.
The Black Swan
Book Name: The Black Swan
SubTitle: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Author Name: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Book Description: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a philosophy / literary book by the epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The core theme of the book is that the impact of rare events is huge and highly underrated. We are not aware of it, which increases their effect much. Our mind and thinking habits are poorly equipped to handle rare events. The book relates the various cognitive and psychological reasons of this, from multiple perspectives. The book is written in a literary style and covers a wide variety of subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, and living life. (wikipedia)
Atlas Shrugged
Book Name: Atlas Shrugged
SubTitle:
Author Name: Ayn Rand
Book Description: An acclaimed master piece, a way of life, an influence on the life of millions of readers, Atlas Shrugged is an astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world, and did. Atlas Shrugged raises more questions and challenges conventional wisdom way more than most books that you might have read. The book opens with, "Who is John Galt?” a question whose answer might change your thought process and bring out a different person in you altogether.

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