Mirror Mirror - Mark Pendergast

This book took a long time for me to read. Somehow, work, inter-city travel and some more work kept digging potholes and constructing road blocks to stop me from getting through the book. But I fought it all and kept going. And it was worth every bit of it.
Non-fiction books will always be a tricky affair. I don’t think someone who doesn’t read books could have got through a book like this, or for that matter any science history book. But for any bibliophile, this book would be immensely pleasurable. If you are an astronomer then too, this book will serve up a history of your subject in an entirely different perspective.
The book is essentially a history of mirrors. And what a fascinating history it is! The author explores the topic beautifully, right from the BC era to the 21st century, the journey of the mirror from being an extremely rare, expensive and a prized possession when mirror makers were imprisoned to keep their talents within Vienna, to something extremely commonplace; from being a simple reflector of Roman orgies to a devastating weapon. And along the journey, the evolution of human interaction with mirrors in various stages is equally fascinating. The impact of mirrors in painting, literature, astronomy, optical sciences, communications, psychology is astounding. Legend has it that Archimedes burnt enemy ships using a concave reflecting mirror by focusing sun rays to an enemy. It’s not exactly proven whether mirror was used as a weapon then, but now, lasers are quite a popular in weapon sciences. Telescopes have got bigger, better, and are equipped to capture more than just visible light from million of light years away, or light emitted as early as the big bang. And lastly people have changed the way they look at mirrors. From being a simple polished metal, to a scrying for psychic knowledge, to an inseparable fashion accessory, and finally to a ‘true mirror’ which reflects us as we are seen by others is a long journey indeed.
The book charts all these territories and more. The heroes and villains of the story are enumerated exceptionally well. And there are too many of them to mention here. But various people have contributed to the development of mirror, be it in terms of manufacturing them with various materials, or giving them a particular shape, to their applications in earth and space, in various wavelengths of emissions.
Last word is that it is a truly fascinating book about something so commonplace that you hardly think about it. Imagine, there are ‘true mirrors’ which are available which actually do not show a reversed image when you stand in front of it. So that, it shows you how you would appear to other people. That is so extremely against the intuition as far as gazing into a mirror is concerned, and at the same time so novel an experience! I wish I could see myself in a true mirror! The book is an excellent product of some tremendous research and great writing style. Without adequate research the book would have ended up being a hodge-podge mixture of arbitrary information about mirrors. And without great writing style, it could have been reduced to a boring, soporific history text-book. It has all the necessary elements to make a fun read for anyone with a curious mind.

The Corporation that Changed the World - Nick Robins

Well… I didn’t really finish this book, because I carelessly forgot it in a flight I took from Mumbai to Bangalore… but I had read around 80% of the book so am in a position to comment about the book.

The reason I bought this book is to read up into the history of East India Company and their stance with respect to India. The history books in the school dwelt on the Maratha era and then passed on to the 1857 mutiny and there on to the Independence struggle with only a cursory mention about the impact of the East India Company on the nation from a economic and a political perspective. The only thing that was communicated was the atrocities committed on the Indians under the rule of East India Company and then the British Raj. What this book offers is a proper blend of the rise of East India Company, their functioning, their political and social impact not just in India but globally, and their eventual demise.

The good thing is that the author has managed to keep out any bias while presenting the historical facts. He maintains the business book feel while discussing the operations of East India Company as he compares their functioning, the organizational structure, the capital raising mechanisms and the rampant malpractices of the Company with the modern day organization.

The book gives sufficient detail for a person like me who wants to read on the subject more out of curiosity and for high level information. The writing is entertaining and is not boring in a text book way. It does not mince words about the cruelty that the Britishers subjected the Indians to and how methodically they ruined the entire country’s economy. This is the first business book that sparked my patriotic fury. And it did well to remind me of the struggle that India as a nation has been through to be free from the clutches of the foreign power. All the post-independence rhetoric, however clichéd, strikes true. We as Indians, have struggled for long. It’s about time we did not get carried away with the rampant westernization and rose to the riches of the pre-East-India era, where while there were inter-ruler wars, the per-capita income for the common man, was much higher. It’s high time we stopped being a poor nation.