Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Book Review Top 10 Business Books PDF
Book Review Top 10 Business Books PDF
BOOK REVIEW
A notable feature of 2010 has been the proliferating titles on corporate India, or
those written by Indian authors on business matters. A review of the best-selling
business books in India in 2010, courtesy Landmark book store
72 Ta t a R e v i e w J a n u a r y 2 0 1 1
Fascinating autobiography
“This is not a ‘how to’ book,” asserts GR Gopinath right in the beginning of
his autobiography. “It’s everything but that. This is just a simple story of a poor
village boy, who after doing myriad things in life, built India’s largest airline.”
For a lad who grew up in a distant village in Karnataka’s Hassan district, and who
studied in a Kannada-medium village school till class VII, Mr Gopinath has indeed
travelled a long way. One of his major achievements is enabling millions of
ordinary Indians to enjoy the thrills of taking a flight, without having to strain their
budgets, by pioneering low-cost aviation. The captain — he served the Indian
Army, even witnessing action in Bangladesh during the 1971 war, before quitting
to chart his own career — is a raconteur who has scores of interesting anecdotes,
which he narrates in this fascinating autobiography. As another aviation maverick,
Simply Fly Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic Airlines, says: “Captain Gopi’s fascinating
Author: GR Gopinath
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers story of rags to riches, almost to rags again, makes wonderful reading for any young
Pages: 380 Price: `499 Indian setting out into business.”
Ta t a R e v i e w J a n u a r y 2 0 1 1 73
Leadership conversations
Blake Davis, the fictional hero in Robin Sharma’s The Leader Who Had No Title,
gets his tips on leadership from his mentor, Tommy Flinn. Blake enlists in the army and
sees action in Iraq, where many of his friends are killed. But this is not a book on the
war in Iraq, so that phase of Blake’s life is dealt with in just a few paragraphs. The
interesting part of the story begins when the narrator, now working at a bookstore in
SoHo, comes across “a most curious stranger... and the lessons he taught me in our all
too brief time together shattered the limitations I’d been clinging to — exposing me to a
The Leader Who Had No Title
whole new way of working and a completely new way of being.” Tommy engages Blake Author: Robin Sharma
in four leadership conversations, which among other things, teach him how to work Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
with and influence people like a superstar, regardless of one’s position. Pages: 204 Price: `195
An unusual tutorial
This is a must-read for business leaders, wannabe business leaders and anyone
interested in running an organisation, business or otherwise, successfully.
R Gopalakrishnan has been a professional manager for 43 years — 31 with Hindustan
Lever and 12 with the Tatas — and has worked both in India and abroad. In this book,
Mr Gopalakrishnan explores the three worlds of the manager — the inner world, the
world of relationships and the world of getting things done. Packed with anecdotes and
examples from global businesses, the author weaves a fascinating tale and conveys it in a When the Penny Drops: Learning What
non-didactic fashion. At the end of most chapters, the author provides crisp key is not Taught
Author: R Gopalakrishnan
messages, summing up the lessons. The book also provides insights from the lives of great Publisher: Portfolio, Penguin Group
transformers through the ages. Pages: 181 Price: `399
Sell well
Shiv Khera, author of the best-seller You Can Win, has come out with a useful
volume that gives interesting tips to would-be salespersons and even veterans on how to
become good and professional sales people. The author discusses time-tested and proven
principles — he makes a distinction between principles and tactics; tactics are
manipulative, he notes, whereas principles are based on integrity, respect and
responsibility. In an era when many sales professionals — including tele-marketers —
churn out razzmatazz about their products, but have no time to listen to the potential
You Can Sell buyer, Shiv Khera emphasises on the importance of concepts such as ‘the power of silence’
Author: Shiv Khera
Publisher: Rupa & Co and ‘the power of listening’. The author also focuses on the ‘Psychology of selling’, ‘Rules
Pages: 302 Price: `195 for letter writing’, and ‘Why sales people fail’, besides devoting a chapter to ‘Ethics’.
These books are available at Landmark stores and at www.landmarkonthenet.com
74 Ta t a R e v i e w J a n u a r y 2 0 1 1