Tag Archives: Books

In My Hands Today…

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Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics – Richard H. Thaler

Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. In other words, we misbehave. More importantly, our misbehavior has serious consequences. Dismissed at first by economists as an amusing sideshow, the study of human miscalculations and their effects on markets now drives efforts to make better decisions in our lives, our businesses, and our governments.

Coupling recent discoveries in human psychology with a practical understanding of incentives and market behavior, Thaler enlightens readers about how to make smarter decisions in an increasingly mystifying world. He reveals how behavioral economic analysis opens up new ways to look at everything from household finance to assigning faculty offices in a new building, to TV game shows, the NFL draft, and businesses like Uber.

Laced with antic stories of Thaler’s spirited battles with the bastions of traditional economic thinking, Misbehaving is a singular look into profound human foibles. When economics meets psychology, the implications for individuals, managers, and policy makers are both profound and entertaining.

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Handwritten: The Founding Story of Yuppiechef – Andrew Smith

In 2006, from a lounge in Cape Town, two friends launched an online kitchen-tool store with 32 products, no credit-card facilities, and zero marketing budget. They packaged orders themselves, dropping in a handwritten card with every purchase to prove to skeptical consumers that there were real humans “on the other side of the internet”.

Over the next 16 years, Yuppiechef evolved into a retail pioneer. Handwritten takes you on the rollercoaster journey of scaling an e-commerce empire. From sharing a rusted 1989 Toyota Corolla and battling early credit card fraudsters, to securing multi-million-dollar backing from global venture capital giant Tiger Global. It chronicles the chaotic highs of holiday-season and warehouse floods, the bold move into physical retail, and the ultimate acquisition by the Mr Price Group in 2021.

But beyond the timeline of a successful startup, this is a deeply human memoir drawn from decades of the author’s private journals. It strips away the glossy veneer of the “optimistic, confident” entrepreneur to reveal the profound emotional toll of leadership.

Inside Handwritten, you will discover:

  • The Bootstrapper’s Reality: How Yuppiechef survived its fragile early years without funding, driven by the philosophy of “growing as fast as we can and as slowly as we need to”.
  • Culture as a Strategy: Why true customer loyalty and teamwork is built on genuine human connection, empathy, and “relational hygiene”.
  • The Cost of Success: An honest look at the burnout, anxiety, and imposter syndrome that accompany the relentless pursuit of startup growth.

Whether you are founding a company, leading an organization, or simply someone who often feels like you’re not good enough, Handwritten proves that you can build something extraordinary without having to be perfect.

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China and Japan: Facing History – Ezra F. Vogel

One of the world’s most eminent scholars of East Asia reveals the important touchstones in the long history between China and Japan and argues that for the sake of world stability they must forge a new relationship for the twenty-first century.

China and Japan have cultural and political connections that stretch back fifteen hundred years. But today their relationship is strained. China’s military buildup deeply worries Japan, while Japan’s brutal occupation of China in World War II remains an open wound. In recent years less than ten percent of each population had positive feelings toward the other, and both countries insist that the other side must deal openly with its history before relations can improve.

From the sixth century, when the Japanese adopted core elements of Chinese civilization, to the late twentieth century, when China looked to Japan for a path to capitalism, Ezra Vogel’s China and Japan examines key turning points in Sino-Japanese history. Throughout much of their past, the two countries maintained deep cultural ties, but China, with its great civilization and resources, had the upper hand. Japan’s success in modernizing in the nineteenth century and its victory in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War changed the dynamic, putting Japan in the dominant position. The bitter legacy of World War II has made cooperation difficult, despite efforts to promote trade and, more recently, tourism.

Vogel underscores the need for Japan to offer a thorough apology for the war, but he also urges China to recognize Japan as a potential vital partner in the region. He argues that for the sake of a stable world order, these two Asian giants must reset their relationship, starting with their common interests in environmental protection, disaster relief, global economic development, and scientific research.

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Kitne Ghazi Aaye, Kitne Ghazi Gaye: My Life Story – K.J.S. ‘Tiny’ Dhillon

He has extensively served in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and the North-East of India. He has the distinction of commanding the elite Chinar Corps (15 Corps). And, his last assignment before superannuation was the Director-General Defence Intelligence Agency and Deputy Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Intelligence) under the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Lieutenant General KJS ‘Tiny’ Dhillon (Retd) opens a window to his life in this book.

From the fascinating tales and the toughest challenges he has encountered in his career, including those from his multiple tenures in J&K since 1988 to the responsibility of maintaining a balance between counter-infiltration and counter-terrorist operations on one hand and the use of military soft power on the other in Kashmir, in this book Dhillon unfolds his journeys from a young boy to the Commander of Chinar Corps. With Kashmir being an inseparable part of this story including the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, barbarous attack on the convoy of Indian security personnel on the Jammu-Srinagar highway in Pulwama district, killing 40 CRPF personnel, Balakot to the abrogation of Article 370 and its impact on the socio-political, economic and law and order, among others, the book takes us behind the scenes to bring out the nuances of various intriguing developments at a critical juncture in the history of the erstwhile State of J&K.

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False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in The Age of Ravi Varma – Manu S. Pillai

India’s maharajahs have traditionally been cast as petty despots, consumed by lust and luxury. Bejewelled parasites, they cared more, we are told, for elephants and palaces than for schools and public works.

The British cheerfully circulated the idea that brown royalty needed, enlightened, white hands to guide it, and by the twentieth century many Indians too bought into the stereotype, viewing princely India as packed with imperial stooges. Indeed, even today the princes are either remembered with frothy nostalgia or dismissed as greedy fools, with no role in the making of contemporary India.

In this brilliantly researched book, Manu S. Pillai disputes this view. Tracking the travels of the iconic painter Ravi Varma through five princely states from the 1860s to the early 1900s, he uncovers a picture far removed from the clichés in which the princes are trapped. The world we discover is not of dancing girls, but of sedition, legal battles, the defiance of imperial dictates, and resistance.

We meet maharajahs obsessed with industrialization, and rulers who funded nationalists, these men anything but pushovers for the Raj to manipulate. Outward deference aside, the princes, Pillai shows, forever tested the Raj from denying white officials the right to wear shoes in durbars to trying to surpass British administrative standards. Good governance became a spectacularly subversive act, by which maharajahs and the native statesmen assisting them refuted claims that Indians could not rule themselves.

For decades this made the princes heroes in the eyes of nationalists and anti-colonial thinkers a facet of history we have forgotten and ignored. By refocusing attention on princely India, False Allies takes us on an unforgettable journey and reminds us that the maharajahs were serious political actors, essential to knowing modern India.