Book Summaries for Essay

1. Animal Farm- by George Orwell

○ The story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to
create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy- but end up ge ng
ruled by some of the animals only
○ Lessons learned:
● Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
● Power can induce corrup bility

2. Sapiens- By Yuval Noah Harari

○ (Emergence of humans about 2,00,000 years ago)
○ About 70,000 years ago organisms belonging to the species Homo sapiens started to
form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of
these human cultures is called history.
○ Three important revolu ons shaped the course of history:
i. The Cogni ve Revolu on kick-started history about 70,000 years ago.
ii. The Agricultural Revolu on sped it up about 12,000 years ago.
iii. The Scien fic Revolu on, which got underway only 500 years ago, may well end
history and start something completely different.
○ Humans first evolved in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago.
○ One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessi es and spawn
new obliga ons.
○ Between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some Sumerian geniuses (in southern
Mesopotamia) invented a system for storing and processing informa on outside their
brains, once that was custom-built to handle large amounts of mathema cal data
(keeping records of stored harvests). This system is called “wri ng”.
○ Some me before the 9th century, Arabs invaded India, encountered the numbering
system (0 to 9 devised by Hindus), understood its usefulness, refined it, and spread it
through the Middle East and then to Europe. ( Human development a collec ve
endeavor)
○ Clennon King, a black student who applied to the University of Mississippi in 1958, was
forcefully commi ed to a mental asylum. The presiding judge ruled that a black person
must surely be insane to think he could be admi ed to the University of Mississippi.
○ Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted.
○ In 1199, King Richard the Lionheart was struck by an arrow in his le shoulder and died.
Today we’d say he incurred a minor injury. (Evolu on of medical sciences, impact of
development of science on humans)

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 ○ Real peace is the implausibility of war.
○ The quality of collec ve belief in fic on and the ability to collaborate together in larger
numbers helped the otherwise meek species that we are, to conquer the more powerful
species.
i. As man can communicate, cooperate and live in large numbers. The real
strength of man lies in his collec veness.
○ For most of history, poli es could enrich themselves by loo ng or annexing enemy
territories. Most wealth was composed of fields, ca le, slaves, and gold, so it was easy to
steal it occupy it. Today wealth consists mainly of human capital, technical know-how,
and complex socio-economic structures such as banks. Consequently, carrying it off or
incorpora ng it into one’s territory is difficult.

3. War and Peace- By Leo Tolstoy

● Lessons to be learned
● "Seize the moments of happiness, love, and be loved! That is the only reality in
the world, all else is folly."
● "All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."
● "While there is life there is happiness."
● Do not get stopped by failures- the hardest me crisis teaches us most, we must
never lose hope.
● The strongest of all warriors are two- me and pa ence

4. Becoming- By Michelle Obama

○ tells a tale of a young girl born in Chicago and takes us through her growing and
forma ve years.
○ It tells of how a woman found her voice in a discriminatory society; how she emerged
strong, fearless, and confident

5. A Christmas Carol- By Charles Dickens

● Scrooge is visited by 3 ghosts- of past, present and future- to help him realise the folly of
his ways and change his future
● Lessons to be learned:
● Learn from the mistakes of others
● It is never too late to change.

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 6. Art of War - By Sun Tzu
○ “According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans.”
○ “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on
our readiness to receive him.”

7. Story of My Life- By Helen Keller (Autobiography)

○ Lessons to be learnt
● The “unrealis c” can be realis c.
● Your future is up to you.
● “It’s a terrible thing to see, and have no vision!”
● “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
● “While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.”

8. Papers on Psychoanalysis- By Sigmund Freud

● wrote the book "The interpreta on of dreams"
● The dichotomy of human nature.
● events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our
personality.
● we rarely give a true account of our mo va on. This is not because we are deliberately
lying. While human beings are great deceivers of others; they are even more adept at
self-decep on.

9. Arthashastra- By Kau lya

● 'This trea se is divided into sixteen books dealing with virtually every topic concerned
with the running of a state, taxa on, law, diplomacy, military strategy, economics,
bureaucracy etc
● The Arthshastra linked poli cal governance with economic governance. The end is
economic governance while poli cal governance is the means.
● 'The end jus fies the means', this is supposed to be the basis of Kau lyan beliefs.
Poli cal power and material wealth are the means and ends of governance. And good
governance - poli cal or economic - depends upon jus fying the ends and means as the
socio, economic and poli cal circumstances.

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 10. The Silk Roads- by Peter Frankopan
○ describes how the Eastern world used to be the avenues of new ideas, trade and art
while the West was under dark ages
○ but then some bad things happened the East lost its charm while the West rose to glory,
s ll con nuing to do so. Furthermore, the author argues that in the near future, the East
will rise again, evident with the rise of China and India.

11. Educated- by Tara Westover

○ It's a memoir of a woman who was born in a US household where her father was a
paranoid and delusional man — who thought schools corrupt people, medicines are
poison and we all are going to die in 2000 ... thus he was strictly against sending girls to
schools and go to hospitals.
○ She had a very bad and unique (bad) childhood and was under a very strict domina on
of her father, Gene. Finally, at 16 years she decided to run away from this depressing
setup and with the help of her elder brother managed to get into university.
○ Even at the university, she had a hard me coping with the outside culture and social
fabric. She went on to describe the cultural shocks, her difficulty in understanding
classes and the types of people she met. Ul mately she overcame all these and went on
to do her Ph.D. from Cambridge.
○ In her journey she understood the importance of Educa on how it can change a person,
his worldview, and his social connec ons ... she got to know the flaws in her family, esp
her father ...who was basically having a Bipolar Disorder
○ It's a story of inspira on and dedica on shown by a young girl, who defying all odds,
with no support from her parents, to make her own way and eventually her career.

12. Why Na ons Fail- By James Robinson

○ It's a story of power, prosperity and poverty ... how different na ons’ des nies turned
out for them.
○ Its main focus is on Ins tu ons — how strong and built on the right founda on
ins tu ons ensure a prosperous future. It provides an elaborated discussion of places
with similar geography, which have developed so much differently...all because of
ins tu ons
○ also explains how the poli cs unfolds and how it drives the economics of the na on
which in turn influences poli cs, thus making a cycle - this can be virtuous or vicious
depending upon ins tu ons
○ So close and yet so far- city of Nogales in US and Mexico Border- on both sides, startling
differences because of ins tu ons

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 13. Man’s Search for Meaning- by Victor Frankl
○ A story of hope and willpower of the author while being in the concentra on camp in
Nazi Germany. He describes his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other camps —
how every day firstly felt seemed like the worst day in his life ...on the verge of death in
the face of savagery and inhumanity... But s ll, something pushed him to live for another
day ... soon he got accustomed to his reality ... he describes the avg life of an avg inmate
in a concentra on camp .... How life turned upside down so suddenly ...how people
found it hard to grasp the reality and forget their erstwhile ‘free’ life.
○ His best quote picked from Nietzsche — “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost
any How”

14. The Triumph of Death (1562)- by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

○ reflects the social upheaval and terror that followed the plague, which devastated
medieval Europe

15. The Great Illusion (1910)- by Norman Angell

● It argued that war in modern was an economic impossibility, due to the growing
economic interdependence (by 1914, world trade was up to 16% of GDP)
● The book sold over a million copies, translated into 22 copies
● But proved wrong as World War 1 broke on July 28, 1914

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