THE CHAOS THEORY

“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

This book is widely described as the “bible of capitalism.” For nearly 70 years since it was first published in 1957, it has exerted an enormous and enduring influence on American politics, corporate culture, and economic thought. It is also the book that often described as the gateway drug to libertarianism, for reasons that will become obvious later.

But what makes it a go-to book for capitalism, or more precisely American capitalism? The entire theme of this novel is this: Socialism is bad, capitalism is good. It is told through a dystopian narrative set in near-future United States in a state of decline, with a collapsing society under the weight of socialist bureaucracy, collectivist regulations, and government overreach.

The narrative follows a character by the name of Dagny Taggart, who is a brilliant and independent Vice President of Operations for Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. She is the great grand daughter of the founder of Taggart, Nathaniel Taggart, where the company was passed down to Dagny and her brother Jim after their father Arthur Taggart passed away.

Now Jim Taggart is officially the president of the company, despite being largely incompetent and relies more on political cronyism, simply because he’s the older brother. But Dagny is the one who really runs the company and fights to keep the crumbling railway alive, despite incompetent executives and a flood of government regulations. She’s doing so by partnering with self-made steel magnate Hank Rearden, through utilizing his ultra-strong Rearden Metal to construct the very successful “John Galt Line” to service Colorado’s booming industrial sector.

However, as they work, they’re starting to notice a terrifying trend: The country’s best entrepreneurs, scientists, and artists one by one are starting to abandon their businesses and vanished without a trace. And as the economy worsens, the corrupt socialist government increasingly passes more suffocating regulations: Competence is heavily taxed, while private properties are seized to support the failing and politically-connected enterprises.

Moreover, Dagny’s childhood friend and former lover Francisco d’Anconia also has to deliberately sabotage his own global copper empire to keep the government from looting it. Even Hank Rearden gets into trouble and is put on a trial for illegally selling his metal, an accusation that he denies and refuses to apologize. And when they thought things cannot get any worse, the government enacts Directive 10-289 that completely freezes the economy, outlaws job changes, and most of all forces Rearden to sign over his metal patents.

But then a major turning point occurs in the novel, after Dagny suffers from a plane crash. In the aftermath, she stumbles upon a hidden, self-sufficient valley in the Rocky Mountains known as Galt’s Gulch. It is here where she discovers the missing innovators of a highly advanced electromagnetic motor that was left behind in an abandoned factory (in which she became obsessed with tracking down its creator). And the innovators are led by the enigmatic engineer John Galt.

Galt is the hero of the story, despite only appears in the 3rd part of this 1098 pages book. But he and his ideas were mentioned several times already throughout the book as an unnamed mysterious figure. In fact, the book opens with the question “who is John Galt?”, a throwaway phrase that the characters in the book eventually use to express hopelessness or shrug off unanswerable questions, where only later that they learn that he is a real person.

So, who is John Galt? He is Ayn Rand’s ideal man: rational, self-made, uncompromising, and unwilling to let his capabilities taken advantage by people who demand them as a duty. His long radio speech near the end of the book (60 pages long) lays out the core of Rand’s philosophy.

In the story, he is the mastermind who organized the “strike of the mind”, which convinced the world’s producers to withdraw their talents and refuse to support the parasitic regime. And the proceeding story evolves around the activities of Galt and his rebelling producers, where he subsequently got captured and tortured in the government’s desperate attempt to force him and his followers to restore the economy. Dagny and the producers eventually rescue Galt, as the socialist state begins their disintegration into darkness.

The novel ends with the producers preparing to return, ready to rebuild society that was destroyed by socialism, this time with the foundation of freedom and the glorious capitalism.

It is such a tiring book to read; mind you, not because of the length (many other 1000+ pages books are interesting) but because of the many distracted gibberish from the main plot, not to mention its repetitiveness.

Throughout the story Ayn Rand keep on showing the argument that individuals should live entirely for their own interest, with the pursuit of their own happiness as the highest moral purpose, while simultaneously demonizing altruism (the moral obligation to sacrifice oneself for others) and forced redistribution as a moral corruption. The novel also champions unregulated free markets as the only true moral economic system, because it respects individual rights, protects private property, and rewards merit.

Self interest in an unregulated market? No wonder that this book is so popular among predatory capitalists, corporatists, and plutocrats in the United States. It perfectly captures the very essence of American laissez-faire capitalism. And no wonder that it is also highly regarded by the libertarians, because the morality of rational self-interest and the dangers of government overreach are essentially core libertarian principles, although Rand repackaged them into her own philosophy called Objectivism and she ironically explicitly rejected libertarianism (and double irony, she also rejected the Republican Party, who is now championing her ideas).

Conversely, critics of the book – including many philosophers and economists – argue that the book oversimplifies the economic arguments and ignores the role of luck, public goods, and social cooperation. It also caricatures its characters and presents a stark contrast between what good and evil looks like.

For example, the government “looters” are almost cartoonishly incompetent and malicious like corrupt Soviet officials, while in the real world the advocats of government regulations and redistribution rarely look like that and more like the Scandinavians with their social democracy, the government of Singapore, or many other welfare states. Meanwhile, John Galt and the producers are portrayed as the most brilliant and moral bunch of people, with no greed and no tendency to commit fraud in an unregulated market, no desire for monopoly, or no intention to just dump pollution (because no regulation to prevent this).

And what about the title of the book? It refers to the story of Atlas, a mighty second-generation Greek Titan who after a defeat in the battle of Titans was condemned by Zeus to hold the heavy celestial sphere (the vault of the sky) on his shoulder for eternity.

In the novel, Atlas is equivalent to the producers who are condemned to carry the weight of the economy (the analogical celestial sphere). Because Rand argues that human reasoning and creative thoughts are the source of all production, wealth, and technological advancement – the very essence and products of the producers.

Meanwhile, Rand also argues that the evil and incompetence can only succeed when the good and competent agree to cooperate with them. Therefore, by refusing to cooperate with the state the producers are refusing to endure the burden while being condemned by the rotten society that the state has created.

This is as if Atlas just shrugged off the punishment by Zeus and proceeded to throw away the celestial sphere that he was supposed to hold forever.

But here’s the problem. The producers’ strike scenario (Atlas shrugging) assumes that few geniuses carry the entire economy, while in reality modern production relies more on huge network of specialized ordinary workers and institutions. Meanwhile, success in Rand’s mind is attributed almost entirely to individual merit; and in doing so she ignores the role of infrastructure, education, government safety net, courts, and legal order that makes private enterprise possible. These government-assisted environment, unsurprisingly barely appear in the book.

So all in all, I bought and read this book with the intention to get into the minds of the libertarians. And the revelations from it are quite scary. Because yes Rand diagnoses the real problems with socialist’s command economy, but without objectively balance it with the advantages of socialism. And what’s worst, she treats this as a 2-sided moral war but offers little evidence that pure laissez-faire would work better than the mixed economies that the majority of countries actually implement in the real world.

So, in a way this book is nothing more than a utopian dream (that’s right, a socialist dystopian novel wrapped inside a capitalist utopian dream – a takedown piece, if you will). And the scary part? Some of the most powerful people in the US actually believe in Rand’s extreme utopian view, and they are trying to force implement them in the real world. Which is the third irony, because Rand’s ethics actually forbid initiating force, so a government imposing her ideals would be a contradiction.

“What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-Smart Executive” by Mark H. McCormack

This is a classic business book (first published in 1984) that argues people skills and street smart approach are more important than formal academic theories (that are taught in business schools like Harvard).

The book is written by Mark McCormack, a legend in an industry that he practically created: sports management and sports marketing industry. He founded his company in the early 1960s with less than $500 in capital, which then grew into the International Management Group (IMG) with offices around the world and several hundred million dollars in annual revenues.

Among the celebrity sports figures that they have represented as a client: Bjorn Borg, Jean-Claude Killy, Herschel Walker, Jackie Stewart, Chris Evert Lloyd, Martina Navratilova, and many more among the 500 or so clients. They also own 3 fashion model agencies, representing (or have represented) entities as diverse as the Vatican, the Nobel Foundation, and the English Catholic church. And their marketing consulting division is on retainer by more than 50 blue chip companies around the world, where they also do the personal financial planning and management for several hundred high-level corporate executives.

Furthermore, IMG’s television division produces hundreds of hours of original network programming around the world, for clients such as the NFL, Wimbledon, the US Tennis and Golf associations, the NCAA, the World Ski Federation, and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. And they were a television consultant for the Organizing Committees for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics and 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

And throughout his career in more than 20 years McCormack has encountered every kind of business situations and every type of personalities imaginable. As he remarks, “I have had to decipher the complex egos of superstar athletes—and of their spouses, parents, lovers, neighbors, and camp followers. I have dealt with heads of state and heads of corporations, with international bankers and small-town advisors, with bureaucratic governing sports bodies and autocratic empire builders. I have come in contact with every phase and facet of the entertainment, communication, and leisure-time industries. And at one time or another I have done business with practically every nationality on the face of the earth.”

Hence, it is with great authority that he brought forward his thesis that some of the most crucial skills to obtain in the business world are the ones that are not taught in business schools. But this is not in any shape or form an attack on formal education. Instead, as he explains, “In fairness to the Harvard Business School, what they don’t teach you is what they can’t teach you, which is how to read people and how to use that knowledge to get what you want.”

Indeed, these are the skills that can only be obtained through experience, and in its very essence this is what this book can teach you: “how to read people, how to influence their reading of you, and how to apply or customize both to any likely business situation.”

The book is organized around 3 main themes:

1. Learning to read people and understanding human incentives. This part is filled with psychology and hacks for many forms of relationship.
2. Mastering sales and negotiation through relationships and timing. This part is heavy with sales and marketing insights, and everything about of negotiation.
3. How to properly run a business. This part is filled with practical advice on managing time effectively, cutting down bureaucracy, on when and how to expand your business, recruiting and managing the experts, how to delegate, how to make your employees happy, and many more, including advices for start-up entrepreneurs.

And the way McCormack teaches the lessons is through real-life examples from his own wealth of experiences and observations. And the stories are so very amusing. My favourite got to be chapter 13 where he breaks down his habit of organizing his life, his schedule, time saving, note taking, getting things done, even inserting schedule for his do-nothing or relaxing time. And furthermore, let’s just say I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says about meetings.

I must admit, I was skeptical at first about the book because it has this marketing buzzword for its title. But as it turns out, it is not another cliche business book written by a university professor somewhere, nor it is a book that is trying to be “out-of-the-box” with some made-up theories. Instead, it is a compact book that pours in decades of experience in directly dealing with business from the practical, no-nonsense, approach; written by a guy who Sports Illustrated once dubbed as “the most powerful man in sport.”

It has been more than 40 years now since the first publication of the book. And it has since changed even Harvard Business School where they eventually adapted their curriculum to address many of the gaps that McCormack highlighted in this book. This is how impactful this book is.

Here are some of the most impactful quotes from the book:

1. What people say and do in the most innocent situations can speak volumes about their real selves.
2. If nothing else, you want to hear what people are really saying, as opposed to what they are telling you; you want to be able to put someone’s deeds—his own business activities—into the larger context of character.
3. Business situations always come down to people situations. And the more—and the sooner—I know about the person I am dealing with, the more effective I’m going to be.
4. A person’s true nature, true self, cannot change with situations. It is totally consistent. The better you know that person, the more you can get beneath the facades, the more accurately you can predict how he or she is likely to react or respond in almost any business situation. This knowledge can be invaluable.
5. I will often fly great distances to meet someone face to face, even when I can say much of what needs to be said over the phone. If it’s important, or if it’s a relationship that may be long term, I want to form impressions based on what I observe even more than on what I hear. After all, the impression you have from meeting someone in person is often quite different from that formed in speaking over the phone.
6. When I meet someone face to face, what I am trying to establish more than anything else is a comfort zone—the “picture frame,” so to speak—or the boundaries I need to observe, based on what I see and hear, which will best enable me to deal with that person.
7. It bothers me when people strike a pose, when their casualness is a little too studied, or their efforts to bulk up their physique or suck in their stomach are a little too strained. The offices of these people, or how they choose to decorate them, are often an extension of this. An office that is overly cluttered with diplomas and mementos or is obviously contrived to create a certain impression is usually a dead giveaway. You have to be careful in dealing with people of this sort. They are more likely to be interested in looks than in performance, in appearances rather than real accomplishment.
8. A person’s ego, even an overbearing one, may be your strongest ally. A lot of deals get made simply because someone’s ego is so involved that psychologically he can’t afford not to get it done. If you can read ego, understand its impact on business events, then control it by either stroking it, poking at it, or minimizing its damage, you can be the beneficiary of many of these deals.
9. People often reveal their innermost selves in the most innocent of situations. How they deal with a waiter or an airline attendant can provide a fascinating glimpse beneath the surface. Knowing how impatient they are in a particular situation, or how upset they get over a minor error, can prove invaluable later on.
10. Fish-out-of-water venues—or any small gathering in which people are forced to interact and operate outside their own comfort zones—can also be educational.
11. During a two-hour business meeting, the first several minutes—before you actually get down to the business at hand—and the last several minutes—as everyone is saying goodbye—can tell you more about the people you are dealing with than almost anything else that goes on in between.
12. Also, be aware of people during interruptions, unusual exchanges, or anything that intrudes upon the more formal flow of a business situation. There is a certain amount of role playing in most business encounters, and when someone “breaks ranks” the facades are going to crack a little. Simply noticing who does the breaking and how others respond with words and eyes can tell you a lot.
13. Discretion is the better part of reading people. The idea of using what you have learned properly is not to tell them how insecure you think they are or to point out all the things you have perceptively intuited that they may be doing wrong. If you let them know what you know, you will blow any chance of using your own insight effectively.
14. The surest way to let people in on your own security quotient is to tell them all about your accomplishments. Let people learn of your qualities and achievements from someone else.
15. If you can force yourself to step back from any business situation, particularly one that is heating up, your powers of observation will automatically increase.
16. How people relate to you in business is based on the conscious and unconscious statements you make about yourself. The way you dress, your phone manner, your efficiency, the way you phrase a letter, the way you greet people all affect the impression you make on others—their “reading” of you—making people perceive you in the way you want to be perceived.
17. Even if you have something worth saying, expressing it in a tone or a manner that is a turnoff guarantees no one will listen.
18. Be aware of all the subtle opportunities you have every day for impressing positively and all the not so subtle opportunities you have for impressing negatively. Creating the right impression can be as simple as treating people the way they want to be treated. Or as difficult as treating them that way even when they beg not to be.
19. The impression you’ve made is what allows you to be less than perfect. If you can take advantage of all the little opportunities to create an overall, ongoing impression of competence, effectiveness, maturity, and fair-minded toughness—the kind of person people want to do business with—they will overlook the occasional transgression. People will forgive all sorts of “out-of-character” behavior in you if their overall, lasting impression is favorable.
20. Consider doing the opposite of what someone expects. Often it’s remarkably effective. If someone is expecting toughness, it is amazing what a simple, self-effacing remark will do. If someone anticipates a hard line, making an immediate insignificant concession is a good way to begin. The more someone thinks I want something from him, the more I will go out of my way to appear as if I don’t.
21. The way you dress forms an immediate, strong impression about who you are. In general, it makes more sense to be dressed conservatively. If you accept that you can tell a lot about people by what they’re wearing, it’s safe to assume they can tell the same things about you. Obviously, the more conservative your business dress, the harder you are to read.
22. Whenever I’m involved in a new business relationship, I create situations that allow for split-second efficiency on my part. I will set up a phone call for 10 AM and will call precisely at 10 AM. I will promise to have a letter on somebody’s desk by next Monday, and that letter will be there by next Monday. I will show up for an appointment exactly when I said I would. Do this the first few times you deal with any new business associates, and they will assume you conduct all your business affairs that way.
23. The quickest way to make a lasting negative impression is to waste someone’s time: use it cavalierly, or take up more of it than you need.
24. Business promises are made all the time, and almost as often they’re broken—needlessly creating a horrible impression. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you can’t do it, think it’s more trouble than it’s worth, or don’t want to do it, then don’t say you will. Make up any excuse, but don’t even say “I’ll try.” At the very least that leaves the other party with the impression that you tried—and failed.
25. If you have a client or customer you want to impress, do something for his kids. It will mean far more to your customer than almost anything you could do for him.
26. As a lawyer, it’s easy for me to treat a commitment as a commitment and a deal as a deal. But I’ve often found that by recognizing extenuating circumstances and letting someone off the hook I have accomplished much more for myself and my company in the long run.
27. Expanding on an existing business relationship is almost always easier than starting a new one. By creating the right impression you make people want to deal with you over and over again. Achieving that often comes down to knowing how hard to push.
28. Where does your self-interest lie—in a short-term gain or in a long-term relationship? Sometimes you can make the best deal for yourself by driving a soft bargain.
29. False flattery is transparent and can easily backfire. But legitimate flattery—appreciating and acknowledging someone’s genuine business skills from which you have benefited—can be quite seductive.
30. “Mentorism” is simply a matter of seeking advice and direction from someone you trust and respect. Pretty soon, the line between giving you this advice and doing you a favor totally disappears.
31. If you violate a confidence, the act will eventually come back to haunt you.
32. Common sense aside, then, the most important asset in business is a sense of humor, an ability to laugh at yourself or the situation.
33. “Everyone makes errors. It’s when those errors are repeated that it becomes a mistake.” You don’t have to be perfect, but you should learn from your imperfections.
34. Once you know the particulars and the players and have analyzed all the ramifications, you can start to size up a situation. Step back and see what opportunities exist at the outset.
35. This, indeed, is the essential difference between those who are “fortunate” in business and those who aren’t. The group that is “naturally lucky” can see the tiniest crack and turn it into a crevice. The group that “never gets a break” wouldn’t see opportunity if it jumped up and down and then mugged them.
36. One of the best rules I know is, when a crisis occurs or is in the process of occurring, don’t react. Just say you’d like to think about it. Make any excuse, but don’t respond. Once you have analyzed the crisis in terms of its potential for opportunity as well as its potential for disaster, then you can respond.
37. I would say, however, that in our twenty-odd years in business, 90 percent of our successes have involved in some way the need for patience, and 90 percent of our failures have been caused in part by a lack of it.
38. Even when you have a definite opinion, it is often better to soften it by allowing for the possibility that you may not be omniscient: “I don’t know, but it appears to me that…”
39. What these people fail to realize is that not admitting what you don’t know can lead to suspicion about what you do know.
40. There is a business philosophy I subscribe to which says that if you aren’t making mistakes you aren’t trying hard enough. I believe that to get ahead in business you have to be constantly testing the edge. This means that often you are going to be wrong. The good executives are right most of the time, but they also know when they are wrong and are not afraid to admit it.
41. It is not the mistake itself but how a mistake is handled that forms the lasting impression. These people would be so much better off, and would look so much better in the eyes of management, if they could admit their mistakes and get on with it rather than waste everyone’s time trying to rationalize them, cover them up, or lay the blame elsewhere.
42. When you need something from another department, ask yourself, “What can I do to make it easier for them?”
43. The quickest way to lose credibility is to rage about minor offenses because of a buildup over major ones. This is the corporate version of getting a divorce because your spouse squeezes toothpaste from the middle of the tube. We’re all susceptible to it, but it also shows immaturity and reveals lack of good judgment.
44. The people who get ahead have a need, are driven to perform a task well, no matter what the task is or how mundane it may actually be. They bring to any job an attitude which actually transforms the job into something greater. Carpenters who become contractors at one time had a need to drive a nail straighter and truer than anyone else. Waiters who end up owning restaurants were at one time very good waiters.
45. I have yet to meet a chairman or a CEO of a major corporation who didn’t pride himself on his powers of persuasion—in other words, his salesmanship.
46. A feeling that selling is intrusive is not a problem. It is an asset. The best salesmen all seem to have a sixth sense about this. They can tell by the tone in someone’s voice or the atmosphere in the room when the mood or timing is wrong. And either because they don’t want to impose, or because they know that it is not in their own best interests to do so, they will not antagonize their customer by attempting to make a sale.
47. Effective selling is directly tied to timing, patience, and persistence—and to sensitivity to the situation and the person with whom you are dealing. An awareness of when you are imposing can be the most important personal asset a salesman can have. It also helps to believe in your product. When I feel that what I am selling is really right for someone, that it simply makes sense for this particular customer, I never feel I am imposing. I feel that I am doing him a favor.
48. Many ideas fail not because they are bad ideas, not because they are poorly executed, but because the timing is not correct.
49. Extend, renew, or renegotiate a contract when the other party is the happiest, not when the contract is about to expire. Whenever we’ve done an exceptional deal for a client, I encourage the executive in charge to discuss extending the client’s representation agreement then, even if it still has a year or so to run.
50. The best person to sell to is someone who has just arrived at a new company or is just leaving.
51. The quickest way to lose credibility is to give someone an absolute deadline and then extend it, amend it, or ignore it.
52. If you have more than one subject to discuss, or more than one idea or item to sell, make sure you reserve enough time for the most important of them. Never place yourself in the position of having to ask, “Could I have a few more minutes? I haven’t gotten to my main idea yet.”
53. One of the best ways to impress a buyer is to take a half-hour of his time when he’s expecting you to take an hour. One of the worst is to take an hour and a half.
54. There comes a point in almost any sales pitch when the other person should be talking, and there comes a point in almost any sales pitch when no one should be talking.
55. If you ask a question on a particular subject and the answer is unsatisfactory, the best response is none at all.
56. Once you get to the point in a sales pitch where you have asked for a commitment, don’t speak again until the other person has replied in some fashion. Don’t restate your case. Don’t lobby. Don’t tell him you know it’s a tough decision, but…
57. Once you’ve made the sale, anything else you say about it can only work against you. So change the subject.
58. One of the most subtle forms of marketability is building the perceptions into the product itself, doing everything one can to make the product “buyable.”
59. These are the fundamental selling truths. If you don’t know your product, people will resent your efforts to sell it; if you don’t believe in it, no amount of personality and technique will cover that fact; if you can’t sell with enthusiasm, the lack of it will be infectious.
60. Part of knowing your product is knowing all the reasons someone might not want to buy it. Anticipate the reasons. State them clearly in your mind, spell them out on paper if necessary—and have an answer ready for each of them.
61. A good salesman can take ten facts about a product and by stressing some and deemphasizing others create ten different impressions. That’s what salesmanship really is: positioning the facts to get the desired response.
62. When you have a pretty good idea of value, don’t be afraid to name your price. In fact, this is the negotiating instance when it may be to your advantage to go first.
63. People often underestimate the importance of a conducive sales atmosphere. Just as there is a right time to make a sale there is usually a right place for it as well. The worst place may be the buyer’s office. It can’t compare to over lunch, after a tennis game, on a golf course, or anyplace where his receptivity is likely to be up and his guard is likely to be down.
64. A few well-placed “no’s” create the right environment for a “yes.”
65. Find out whom your would-be clients hate. That knowledge can help you push them toward your deal, particularly if they are sitting on the fence ready to teeter off to one side or the other.
66. Many times our best sales approach has been merely to expose a product to a prospective buyer and let the exposure speak for itself. The buyer’s mind runs rampant with possibilities, and in his own words he begins to tell you—and to convince himself in the process—what it is that he wants to buy.
67. The best first reaction is no reaction at all.
68. Sell directly to the key person, and if he likes what you’re proposing, he will know best how to sell it in.
69. The practical solution is to make them see their self-interest.
70. The point of negotiation is to reach an agreement that is mutually advantageous to both parties. To make it a contest of egos can only work against you. Don’t use phrases like “deal breaker,” “take it or leave it,” or “that’s nonnegotiable”—anything that makes you sound like you’re daring the other person to knock a chip off your shoulder.
71. A lot of times you can push someone to the wall and you’ll still reach an agreement, but his resentment will come back to haunt you in a million ways.
72. If you don’t like what you’re hearing, respond with a question, even if it’s no more than “Why are you saying that?” It may cause the other side to scrutinize their position a little more closely. It softens your response. At the very least it keeps them talking while you keep listening.
73. Another negotiating technique that I have found effective is to sweeten the deal with things that aren’t that important to me but could be important to him. This can include terms which have little or nothing to do with the deal at hand.
74. Never overlook the barter possibilities of throwing in quantities of your product, which you get at cost but which are valued by the other party at something closer to retail.
75. The pressure to get a deal done can make you say and do things that aren’t in your best interest. Whether your deadline is real and absolute (it rarely is), or merely desirable or convenient, don’t let the other party know about it. If the other party knows you have a deadline, they really don’t need to know—or give on—anything else. Conversely, their deadline is one of the most valuable pieces of information you can extract from them.
76. Counter emotional outbursts by going emotionally limp. Say anything except what you probably want to say. “Let me think about that,” or “I’ll call you back.” Perceive it as a game with winners and losers because that’s what it is: a game of wits—and who’s going to be the first to lose theirs.
77. Anger, and other strong emotions, can be effective negotiating tools, but only as a calculated act, never as a reaction.
78. Candor, when properly used, is one of the most powerful, effective—and underused—negotiating techniques I know of. When negotiations become excessively tense, are about to get out of hand, or are in danger of falling through, a moment of candor—“Look, I really want this to go through” or “This is very important to me”—not only brings back perspective, it often totally disarms the other party.
79. Are You Negotiating from Strength or Weakness? This is an important question to ask yourself before actual negotiations begin and can usually be answered from the selling effort alone.
80. If you are negotiating from strength, the more you let your strength be known, the more the other party will go out of his way to disabuse you of it. Even the most obvious compromises will become concession standoffs, with the other party insisting on winning all the minor points because he knows he will have to fold on the big ones.
81. One party generally benefits more than the other from vague or nonbinding language in a contract or letter agreement. Determine up front whether a vague agreement or an airtight one better suits your purpose.
82. A lot of building a business is listening to your own common sense, then taking the necessary steps to turn the theories into practice.
83. If we have had a formula for growth it has been to start with the best, learn from the best, expand slowly and solidify our position, then horizontally diversify our expertise.
84. Obviously, I don’t believe that everyone we’ve ever hired is smarter than I, but I can honestly say that I would not want to match my expertise in fashion, tennis, television, skiing, or football against the people who are running these divisions for us. And I truly do believe that the clients being represented by these divisions are in much better hands than if I was representing them personally.
85. Sell your division rather than yourself, and you will find more of a willingness among others outside your company to work with your subordinates. The smarter you make the people who work for you look, the smarter you are going to look as a manager. It’s also less masochistic.
86. Some managers, I believe, don’t understand that in teaching someone else to do the job they are doing they are freeing up their own time for more important tasks and greater responsibilities.
87. Most management philosophy that you read in a book or learn in a classroom is going to have limited effectiveness. Once you factor in human beings—egos and personalities—even the most sensible theories begin to fall apart.
88. The only management philosophy that does work is the one that acknowledges that none of them do: Be flexible and strive for consistency.
89. I have four general philosophies for dealing with employees: (1) Pay them what they are worth; (2) Make them feel that they are important, yet (3) Make them think for themselves; and (4) Separate office life from social life.
90. Several years ago, Chris Lewinton, managing director of Wilkinson Sword, gave me some very good advice about running a company. “Get to know the people two levels down from you,” he said. “That’s where your future is going to be, and it will give a better idea about the present.”
91. The one thing that people who know me best attribute to me the most is an ability to manage my time efficiently. I begin by viewing a week as 168 hours, and I schedule time for relaxation and rest as well as work. I force myself to have time to relax, be it to play tennis, to read the morning paper, to take a nap in the office, or simply to do nothing—to free my mind from any sort of work-oriented thoughts or decisions. To make sure I have this time I program these nonwork activities into my schedule.
92. I hate leaving unfinished business or having anything hanging over my head, and I work with great intensity to obtain moments of empty space—a minute, an hour, or a weekend—in which to enjoy having nothing to do.
93. I always perceive any business activity or commitment as a function of the time I have allotted for it. I also play a kind of game with myself. If a meeting is starting in one hour and I have decided there are ten things I want to accomplish before that meeting begins, I will do whatever is necessary to fit all ten things into that hour. It may mean making a phone call a lot shorter than I would have liked, or dashing off a note rather than a letter, but by challenging myself this way, by fitting activities into smaller and smaller time segments, I have over the years developed an almost minute-by-minute awareness of how I am spending my time.
94. I pretty well know how long it takes me to do everything, and I pretty well know the quickest way to do everything, from how fast or slow certain restaurants are and in which ones you therefore have to order immediately to the fastest elevators in certain buildings. When arriving at airports, for instance, I will often have people meet me at the departure ramp, which is almost never as crowded as the arrival area and therefore much quicker.
95. In short, I try to be very precise about everything that by its nature is imprecise. My mind is a catalogue of “quick cuts” which allow me to reduce the time-wasting vagueness of certain activities or to avoid them altogether.
96. As a general rule for getting things done the quickest, do the things that everyone else has to do at the times when everyone else isn’t doing them. I leave so early in the morning that getting to work is never a problem.
97. Ninety percent of wasting time and standing in line can be eliminated with a little preplanning and some common sense.
98. The whole solution to mastering time is to do the things you planned on doing when you planned on doing them and for no longer than you planned on doing them. This demands that you work from some overall organizational system.
99. In addition to my yellow pads, I always have a stack of three-by-five cards in any coat pocket. Some of them are marked with the names of employees or business associates with whom I am in regular contact. If I think of something in relation to one of these people, I jot it down on the appropriate card. The next time I speak to that person I will have everything I want to talk about at my fingertips.
100. I also carry a stack of blank cards that I fill up with miscellaneous notes during the day, and at the end of the day I transfer that information to the appropriate page of the appropriate yellow pad. I write down everything I intend to do, and once I have written it down I forget about it. I know it will turn up at the appropriate time and place on the appropriate day.
101. I have never known a successful person in business who didn’t operate from some personal organizational system.
102. There are two points about the way I organize myself which have an almost universal application. First, write it down. Write it down anywhere, on your shirtsleeves if necessary, but write it down. This allows you to free your mind for other things. But more important, it means you are going to do it. Writing something down is a commitment. Once you have performed this physical act, you have provided the momentum for getting something done. The agony of carrying over an item and the ecstasy that comes with crossing it off will provide further incentive. Second, organize for the next day at the end of the previous day. This is what gives me peace of mind at night, a feeling that I am on top of things, and a real excitement about coming into work the next morning. Simply by arranging the next day—defining on paper what I want to accomplish—I feel that I have a head start.
103. It is probably worse to allocate too little time than it is to allocate too much. This puts you in a position of always having to catch up, which backs up through your schedule and usually gets worse as the day wears on.
104. People who manage their time badly seem to want to be unrealistic and go out of their way to create out-of-control situations.
105. You should obviously have a pretty good idea of the number and complexity of the subjects to be discussed before meeting with anyone, but how long each will take also depends on two human factors: how quickly the other person gets and/or gets to the point; and his or her personal style of doing business.
106. Learn everything about the people you are dealing with, including the way they like to do business and their own time management habits. I know the people who will invariably be twenty or thirty minutes late for a meeting, and I will plan on that. I will allocate meetings with them later on my schedule than they have on theirs and use the time differential to get several things accomplished. This is much more productive than getting irritated and hoping that they show up on time for a change.
107. I have known some very effective salesmen who use this to set up appointments and who get in to see people they don’t even know or who otherwise wouldn’t see them: “Write on Mr. So-and-So’s calendar that I will stop by at 10:30 next Wednesday. If this is inconvenient, please have him call me.”
108. Know the characters of the people you are dealing with and observe their phone protocol, not your own—even if theirs is sometimes a bit silly.
109. A no is often better for everyone. It saves time on both sides, and it will give you a sense of satisfaction. The realization that you won’t have to deal with it again can make you feel like you’ve really accomplished something.
110. Someone once told me that when the Ford Motor Company interviews a managerial-level applicant they note whether the potential employee puts salt and pepper on his food before he tastes it, the theory being that such a person is likely to make a decision before knowing all the facts.
111. The people I respect the most in business are all instant decision makers. They don’t need to know every “knowable” fact first. They accept that they are going to make their share of wrong decisions and are self-confident enough to know that most of the time they are going to make the right one. A reputation as a good decision maker is usually based as much on how quickly and definitely that person decides as it is on the results.
112. One kind of decision maker will say, “We shouldn’t do this because three other people tried it and failed,” but a good decision maker will find out what all three did similarly and what all three failed to do similarly before reaching the same conclusion.
113. A circus keeps a baby elephant from running away by chaining it to a stake. When the animal pulls at the chain the cuff chafes its leg, and the baby elephant concludes that to avoid pain it best stay put. But when the elephant grows up, the circus still chains it to the same small stake. The mature elephant could now pull the stake out of the ground like a toothpick, but the elephant remembers the pain and is too dumb to use the new set of facts—how circumstances have changed. The tiny stake keeps a two-ton elephant at bay just as effectively as it did the baby. Many executives are too dependent on old facts, on outmoded conventions, or are still basing decisions on what worked twenty years ago. This is elephantine decision making.
114. A lot of questionable decisions have worked because the people who made them were determined to make them work, and a lot of good decisions have failed because the people who made them never got over their doubts.
115. Many new businesses never get off the ground, not because they were bad ideas, not because the people were wrong, but because the fund-raising efforts failed. Yet many of these new ventures, I believe, didn’t actually require the capital the participants convinced themselves that they did. If they had been willing to start small, to go back a few steps and start from further back, they could have given themselves a fighting chance. I can’t overemphasize the importance of starting small and keeping it simple.
116. The cliché is, “Don’t work hard, work smart.” The truth is, “Work hard, work long, and work smart.”
117. Fear of failure is at least as common as the desire for success. In fact, if properly harnessed it can be the energy that drives the wheel. But for many people it becomes debilitating. Learning to use fear rather than letting it use you is obviously not just a problem for entrepreneurs but for anyone in business.
118. The Inner Game of Business, as this could be called, is understanding the Business Paradox: the better you think you are doing, the greater should be your cause for concern; the more self-satisfied you are with your accomplishments, your past achievements, your “right moves,” the less you should be.

“Coach Wooden’s Leadership Game Plan for Success: 12 Lessons for Extraordinary Performance and Personal Excellence” by John Wooden and Steve Jamison

John Wooden is a legendary college basketball coach from UCLA. He is famous for instilling life lessons into his players’ head, lessons that have since spillover to other walks of life.

Coach Wooden’s core philosophy centers on a redefinition of success, focusing on what they can control: personal character, effort, and preparation instead of external accolades. He prioritized character and discipline above all else, including above reputation and comparing ourselves with others. He never even talked about winning with his players, instead he taught them how to maximize their potential.

This create an interesting reality, where you could lose a game but still be a “success” if you gave 100% of your effort. And by contrast, you could win a game but still be a failure if you underperform your own potential capabilities.

And no matter how talented a player is, coach Wooden still enforce 3 non-negotiable rules to maintain unity in the team: 1. Never be late (respect other people’s time) 2. No profanity (practice emotional self control) 3. Never criticize a teammate (that’s the coach’s job, players on the other hand must support each other).

As you may have guessed, coach Wooden’s philosophy became a mighty formula to success: In the span of 12 years (1964-1975) he won 10 NCAA national championships, while setting an all-time record for 88 consecutive victories. His UCLA teams also won 38 straight playoff games (a record) and played in the Final Four 12 times during a 14-year period (also a record).

And along the way, Coach Wooden produced numerous professional basketball players, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Gail Goodrich, Jamaal Wilkes, Willie Naulls, Walt Hazzard, Marques Johnson, and Sidney Wicks. Coach Wooden also took an immense pride for producing successful students that did not go on to play professional basketball, but became successful in their own fields. Students such as Mike Warren (critically acclaimed actor), Dr. Ralph Drollinger (government and ministry leader), Raymond Lewis (corporate executive and philanthropist), Andy Hill (Emmy-winning producer and author), and Dr. George Stanich (Olympic Medalist and educator), among others.

This particular book was first published in 2009, and it consists of a mix of biography, the analysis of his core principles, his many famous sayings (and their elaborations), and testimonies from his former players. It is written in an easy to digest format, where Coach Wooden’s abundant wisdom are broken down and organized into neat little short chapters, complete with the backstories of how and when and where Coach Wooden first learned about the lessons.

It is such a compact book for everything there is about John Wooden’s philosophy. Deep enough that it can inspire us, but light enough to be read in one single sitting.

“Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” by Oliver Sacks

This book tells the tales of the strange and powerful connection between human neurology and music. It is told through selected clinical case studies, where the author, Oliver Sacks, examines how our brain processes, reacts to, and transformed by music.

And the findings are fascinating. Firstly, music is processed in our brain across diverse and resilient neural networks. Even in circumstances when memory, physical coordination, or even language fail due to disease or trauma, musical processing often remains intact.

Moreover, rhythm and melody can also unlock movement in patients with Parkinson’s disease, restore speech to stroke patients, and provide deep emotional grounding for patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Also equally amusing is the many unusual case studies in the book, such as a survivor of lightning strike who suddenly developed adult-onset musical cravings, or persistent musical hallucinations, or a patient with neurological condition called Amusia where the patient has the inability to perceive or recognize musical tones (making a symphony sound like clattering pots and pans), or perhaps the most curious the case of Clive Wearing who has a severe amnesia and cannot form new memories but can still play music fluently.

Furthermore, throughout the book Sacks shows the contrasting range of individuals who can be hypermusical from birth, and individuals who develop their intense musical obsessions or talents a little later in life. Or the curious case of “ear worm”, or the association of certain notes or interval with colour, and many more. Perhaps the most intriguing for me is his thesis that when one hemisphere of the brain is damaged other sections may step up to compensate, as demonstrated in the stories.

All of these are to show that music is not just a cultural phenomenon or entertainment. But music is a medium that is able to engage an unusually wide and deep network of brain regions, more that almost any other human activities.

The writing style, however, is dry and boring. It is written in such a way that it feels like several essays lumped into one, without a unifying thesis or a proper structure. And after a while the template of the storytelling feels repetitive, with the emphasis is focused on the “tales” of music and the brain, and not the scientific explanations behind then. Such an opportunity missed, since the subject matter is so damn interesting.

“Conversations with Kafka” by Gustav Janouch

They say that this book is a scam. First published in 1951, it is presented as a non-fiction memoir by Gustav Janouch, which supposedly recounted his conversations with Franz Kafka in Prague between 1920-1922 during the time when Janouch was an aspiring teenage poet and Kafka worked with his father at the insurance company.

In the memoir, as a favour for his workmate Kafka is said to agree to be a mentor for Janouch, even though in real life Kafka never once mentioned about this kid in his diary or letter correspondences with his best friend Max Brod, fiancee Milena, his sister Ottla, or long letters to Robert Klopstock. But nevertheless, here we are in the book, where the two is claimed to often talk long conversations while walking in the streets of Prague. The conversations revolve around writing, literature, poetry, philosophy, religion, work, technology, and general life advice.

Skeptics inmediately saw the loophole, where they argued that this long conversation format while walking cannot possibly be rewritten verbatim 3 decades later from memory, because it looks too literary and too neatly structured. Meanwhile, renowned Kafka biographers and scholars have also pointed out various factual errors in this memoir, with chronological contradictions and instances where Janouch looks completely fabricate quotes years after Kafka’s death. One prominent Kafka biographer, Harmut Binder, even conducted extensive archival research comparing Janouch’s claims in the book against Kafka’s actual calendar and office schedules, and found that plenty of the specific meetings between Kafka and Janouch could not have physically taken place.

Moreover, Kafka is also portrayed in the memoir as someone who likes to speak in long, polished, aphoristic monologues; while in reality Kafka was known more to be a quiet person who is hesitant, self-doubting, and highly self-critical. Indeed, this book is trying to make Kafka looks like a prophetic sage like Socrates and Janouch of course as the ever studious Plato.

And if you think things are already weird as it is, in 1968 Janouch published a massively expanded 2nd edition of this book, which doubled the book’s length, after he said he had mysteriously rediscovered 17 long-lost notebooks. In this 2nd edition, Janouch introduced complex political, philosophical, and religious dictums that were all attributed to Kafka, with a degree of 1940s hindsights that the real Kafka couldn’t have had in the early 1920s.

In other words, Janouch is accused of inserting his own political views into Kafka’s image, views that include Janouch’s own trauma of World War 2 and the Holocaust, which is then horrifyingly quoted by some as a primary source of Kafka’s real political views. Even literary analysts have pointed out that the “Kafka” in the 1968 edition is quoting books that Kafka himself had not read at the time.

So why bother reading this book at all? Because it is said that some critics admit that Janouch got Kafka’s tone right, that the Kafka in these pages is gentle, deeply melancholic, hyper-sensitive, and quietly brilliant. And the memoir also gives us the atmospheric sense of what it felt like to walk through the foggy streets of Prague while talking with him. Isn’t it the dream? Furthermore, the book is also packed with beautiful quotes about life, art, and suffering that feel profoundly true to Kafka’s philosophy, and yes including those who he blatantly fabricated. And there’s arguably no better seal of approval in Kafka’s world than Max Brod’s own glowing introduction for the 1st edition (1951) of this book, where Brod vouched for Janouch’s credibility.

Sold? No? Yeah, I’m not buying it either. I find it hard to read a book that looks so blatantly fabricated and feel inauthentic, because this doesn’t look like the Kafka that has a bleak worldview and wrote some of the darkest existentialist novels, or the Kafka that is so private that he asked Max Brod to burn all of his unfinished manuscripts when he dies in 1924. Instead, Janouch claimed to have recorded an unwritten philosophy of life that Kafka expressed only to him in their private conversations, which looks awfully like the high-energy wit of Socrates. And then sold it to a post-war public that is in a need of moral clarity.

You know what’s the worst kind of slander? The ones done to a dead man, because he cannot defend himself. This literary fabrication, which apparently was Janouch’s only famous work, is among the worst I’ve ever read.

“My Friends” by Fredrik Backman

This is a brilliantly-written novel about several broken lives that was captured in a single painting. While the painting itself looks very simple at first (an ocean and 3 kids at the beach sitting and interacting), as the book progresses we learn one new detail at a time that gives more depth to the story.

No spoiler for the actual story, and not even a discussion about the construction of the novel because the best parts of this book are the many plot twists. But let’s just say it reminds me of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, where the answers to the questions in the game show happen to be the contestant’s brutal life experience.

But the difference is, in this novel it’s the other way around. Kind of. The simple painting is the grand summary, and through the narrative we get to discover the small details gradually: the backstory of each kid, the nature of their friendship, whose favourite were the flowers in the painting, why the specific birds, even the story behind a colour in the painting that became world renown; until at the end of the novel we get to see the big picture of why the painting is so damn valuable for the protagonists.

This novel is also like the French movie Jeux d’enfants (Love me if you dare) where in the movie the 2 protagonists don’t really care about anything else in the world except for each others’ inside jokes. This is how the 14 year-olds in this novel kind of behave, because all they got were each others.

However, this is not like the movie Seabiscuit, where several broken lives join forces to create a success story. No, this is more of a survival story among individuals who are living their respective harsh lives – including the side characters – where they rely with one another in the middle of the darkness.

It is such a great portrayal of how a deep meaning of friendship can look like when taken into extreme circumstances; showing that art is a coincidence, love is chaos, and sacrifice is the purest form of comradery.

“Social Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman

Us humans are wired to connect. Neuroscience has discovered that our brain is designed to make it sociable, to get drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we interact with another person.

The brain-to-brain linkup allows our strongest relationships to form. But it is a double-edged sword: positive relationships have a beneficial effect on our health, while negative ones can act like slow poison in our bodies.

This book is the grand conclusion to a series of neurological research and experiments, which answers questions such as what makes a psychopath manipulative? Can we teach our children to grow up to be a happy person? What makes a good marriage? How can a cashier who has a positive vibe can spread joy to his customers? Can relationships serve as a buffer from disease? How to enable the brains of employees or students to do their absolute best? What can be done to fix the relationship of a group that is filled with hate? And so much more, including the science of flirting.

All of this is to confirm that, at a biological level, humans are fundamentally social creatures. And relationships are not just an experience that we have, but they are axis where our brains and bodies are shaped.

“Eugene Onegin” by Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 to an old aristocratic family. From a young age he demonstrated an exceptional talent for writing and was quickly acknowledged as a poetic prodigy by prominent older writers.

At the age of 18 he was appointed into the government service, but for the majority of the time he lived a dissipated life at the capital St. Petersburg while continued writing light verses. His narrative poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” (published in 1820) brought him widespread fame as a leading figure in Russian poetry.

At about the same time, however, several of his mildly seditious verses got him into trouble and eventually led to his banishment from the capital. It is during this so-called “southern exile” (to Ekaterinoslav, Kishinev, Odessa) that he composed several narrative poems and began his novel inverse, “Eugene Onegin.” After several more conflicts with the government, Pushkin was condemned once again, this time to a new period of exile at his family’s estate of Mikhailovskoe. It was there that he wrote some of his lyric poetry, completed his verse drama “Boris Godunov”, and continued working on “Eugene Onegin.”

And then the Decembrist Revolt of 1825 happened. Although some of his friends were imprisoned and even executed, Pushkin was not implicated in the affair, and in 1826 he was pardoned by the new Tsar Nicholas I and was permitted to return to society in Moscow, but still not given free rein to move back to the high society circles in St. Petersburg. Finally, at autumn 1830, while stranded at his estate of Boldino, he completed “Eugene Onegin” after 8 years.

This novel is a reflection of this painful experience, where due to him being physically kept away from St. Petersburg that he loved, he poured his nostalgia and frustration into the story. In general, the fictitious story is about a wealthy and bored St. Petersburg socialite, named Eugene Onegin, who lived a dissipated life. Without giving much spoiler: he rejects a young woman’s love, did something gruesome to his best friend, but later realizes his 2 devastating mistakes a little too late, where in an ironic twist of fate the characters eventually swap positions in their circumstances to create an interesting ending.

The story is told across 8 chapters through a unique, rhythmic poetic structure that would become known as the “Onegin stanza.” It maps out a stark contrast between the glamorous high-society life of St. Petersburg and the quiet and boring Russian countryside (that look similar like his exiled places).

It also has the theme of a superfluous, intelligent, capable man, who wastes his life in cynicism and lacking a true purpose in his life. It is a deliberately blurry line between the character of Eugene Onegin and Pushkin’s own character, giving this book semi-autobiographical elements, despite the larger narratives of these 2 lives that are very different.

Because get this, in real life Alexander Pushkin was also notoriously rebellious, tempestuous, reckless, and deeply unconventional. He was one-eighth African, which made him look different than the other Russians and he used that to his advantage and became a womanizer who kept a famous “Don Juan list” chronicling the dozens of women he pursued, seduced, or fell in love with. He was a drunk, who loves to drink heavily in shady local taverns. He was a hot-headed gambler who often lost vast sums of money that he didn’t have.

He also openly hung out with political radicals, constantly clashed with authority, while through his underground satirical poems he often mock corrupt high-ranking officials and the Tsars themselves, which is why he eventually got exiled, twice. And historians even estimated that he was involved in around 29 duel challenges, the last of which killed him at a young age of 37, leaving a staggering debt of roughly 150,000 rubles (millions in today’s money), which Tsar Nicholas I astonishingly paid off out of respect for his literary genius.

This is what’s so fascinating about Pushkin, his literary genius is complemented by a wealth of experience and observational knowledge that can only be obtained by living an extraordinary life. Just like Ernest Hemingway’s or Paulo Coelho’s crazy life stories. Hence, the depths of their novels.

Decades later after his death, Alexander Pushkin became the single greatest literary inspiration for both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, with both legendary authors viewed Pushkin as the spiritual father of all Russian literature. Many even pay the highest respect towards Pushkin by placing him in Russian literature at par with what Shakespeare is to English literature and Goethe to German literature.

And this book, “Eugene Onegin”, is considered by all as Pushkin’s greatest ever work.

“Laut Bercerita” by Leila S. Chudori

In a glimpse, the cover of this book has this pretty illustration of a scene under the sea, with the book’s title written underneath: “Laut Bercerita” (or roughly translated to “the sea is telling a story”). But this is not a book about the sea, and right at the bottom left of the illustration there’s a drawing of a chained foot.

The owner of the foot is a student named “Biru Laut” (or “Blue Sea”), and he’s the narrator of his own story in this novel. At the beginning of the story Laut is being kidnapped by unknown men, tied to something heavy, and got thrown into the bottom of the sea where he was left to die. This book is like the flashbacks of his life that appear in his dying last seconds.

So, what did he do to get himself into that position? Laut was a student activist in the 1990s Indonesia, during the time where the monetary crisis puts a political pressure towards president Suharto’s 32-years dictatorship, which was reaching a boiling point in 1998 with plenty of student protests (during the time when protesting was absolutely prohibited) that turned real ugly after the killing of students in Trisakti University by the police in the attempt to curb them. And the fictionalised novel shows how Laut and his fellow activists were at the epicentrum of the protests, until one day, at the heat of the chaos, they were kidnapped, interrogated, tortured, and eventually made “disappear”, just like what happened with the student activists in real life.

The chapters in the book go back and forth between 1998 when Laut was captured, and years before during high school, during family gathering, during first time entering university, during their activism days, etc; all of which are designed to humanise Laut and his family and friends. It is such a historically accurate novel, written in very detailed manner in the way the author build up the intellectual arguments, the organizing of the protests, even the gruesome torture that Laut later endures. It really provides a similar hauting feel like the tense days of the protests, which turned into massive riots (with systemic lootings and mass rape), with Suharto eventually forced to step down.

The novel was said to be initially inspired by the testimony by activist Nezar Patria in Tempo magazine in 2008, and further provided with the details by fellow activists Rahardjo Waluya Jati, Mugiyanto Sipin, and a woman activist Lilik HS. Moreover, the character Kasih Kinanti is inspired by another woman activist simply called Lili, while some other characters are inspired by activists who were also interviewed by the author: Budiman Sudjatmiko (who inspired the character of Arifin Bramantyo), Andi Arief, and Munir (through the records from KontraS). And it didn’t take long for the readers to notice that Sang Penyair (“the poet”) is a character inspired by the activist-poet Wiji Thukul.

The book also shows the author’s journalistic capacity by referencing some other student activism throughout world history, such as in France in May 1968, Chile in 1973, and ESDA revolution in Philippines 1986 against Ferdinand Marcos, among others.

But perhaps my favourite parts of the book are when it shows the references that are read or mentioned by the characters in the book, such as books by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Tan Malaka, Amir Hamzah, Chairil Anwar, Rendra, Djoko Lelono, NH Dini, Budi Darma, and more, including foreign authors such as Charles Dickens, Anton Chekov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Mark Twain, Orhan Pamuk, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Isabelle Allende. In particular, I love how the activists are copying and spreading among them Pramoedya’s banned books like “Bumi Manusia”, “Anak Semua Bangsa”, and “Jejak Langkah”, which are the most apropriate books to read in these kind of circumstances.

The story ends in a somber note, however, with the inevitable death of Laut under the sea but with the family never received any confirmation of their son’s situation after disappearance (despite us, the readers, know exactly what happened). It mimicks the real-world tragedy where more than a dozen activists disappeared in 1998 and never really found even today 28 years later.

The narrative later switched to Laut’s sister, Asmara, where we flash forward to the year 2000 where she and her parents (alongside the family and friends of other missing activists) still fighting for answer and justice for their missing sons, and ended up regularly going to the front of the presidential palace every Kamis (or Thursday) to protest about it. In real-life Jakarta, this very action is dubbed “Kamisan.”

Interestingly, the book pointed out that the “Kamisan” ritual was originally inspired by Argentinian mothers who began to protest every Thursday since 1977, in Plaza de Mayo that is directly in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. Dubbed the Ronda de los Jueves, the protests occur to demand answer for their sons and daughters who went missing, in a similar kind of activist kidnapping move by then military dictatorship.

But the difference is, in Argentina a truth commission (CONADEP) was formed immediately after the dictatorship fell in 1983, with plenty of perpetrators were tried and convicted for their crimes, despite there’s still no closure for what happened with the activists bodies.

But in Indonesia, despite the resignation of Suharto, a lot of political analysts and historians argue that the regime never really changed (only change of “clothing”), proven by the absence of truth commission investigating what happened with the activists, the attempt to re-write historical school book to erase the event of 1998, while those who claim to know what’s going on never really reveal it to the public and some of the alledged perpetrators are now even establishing themselves as very well-connected politicians.

“Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation” by Bill Nye

Who doesn’t know Bill Nye the Science Guy? He’s making science more popular with his easygoing approach on the otherwise highly complex subject. This book is no different. It is broken down into easily digestible 37 chapters, talking about all sorts of stuff related with science.

It is mainly talking about evolution vs creationism, where Nye makes the case for evolution as the undeniable reality. It is partly written around his debate against creationist Ken Ham in 2014, where in his argument he provides the evidence for evolution, such as fossil records, genetics and DNA, observed speciation, and geographic distribution. He also points out that things like human appendix or panda’s thumb suggest descent with modification instead of optimal design by a creator/designer.

Nye further disproves creationism’s arguments using evidences such as the ice cores, tree rings, radiometric dating, and starlight distances, all of which show that the Earth (and the universe) is far older than 6000 years as claimed by creationists. He also did the math on the story of global flooding (Noah’s story in the Bible), and how Noah’s Ark landed in Mount Ararat (in modern-day Turkey) with every single species in the world, but yet, for example, there’s not a single trace of kangaroo in Turkey all the way to Asia, and the animal only ever naturally exist in Australia.

Moreover, the book also covers the Big Bang, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the “Big Freeze”, weird chapters about sex, the evolution of dogs, viruses, biodiversity, mass extinction, dinosaurs, the evolution of medicine, human cloning, alien life, and many more.

It is quite an entertaining read with awkward jokes every now and then, although compared with the other science books that I’ve read so far – from Stephen Hawking, to Bill Bryson, Henry Gee, Richard Feynman, Charles C. Mann, Edward Dolnick, Nicholas Spencer, Harriet Swain, Gillian Turner, Terry Breverton, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, among others – this book is a bit pale in comparison. Even an introductory book by New Scientists that cover 132 science questions feels more in depth than this book.

It is because it replaced brevity and clarity with a warmer style of writing with more gibberish and folksy anecdotes, like how his dad is a great boy scout and his brother usually beats him in the game of cards.

Afterall Bill is not a scientist, per se. Although he studied math, physics, and chemistry for his Bachelor’s degree in engineering at Cornell (and during his time there, studied astronomy from astrophysicist Carl Sagan) he is not your typical scientist who has a PhD degree over one sprecific specialty. He doesn’t even have a master’s degree and never published any scientific paper himself. Instead, he build up his credentials by working as a mechanical engineer at Boeing, and being Bill Nye the Science Guy that teaches pop science on TV.

I guess nothing’s wrong for being a TV personality, as long as the science checks out. This is why in the science community he is regarded as an aly who brings science to the public. But it also perhaps explains why, in the absence of in-depth knowledge, the book can get repetitive at times with the same surface-level facts. And it’s funny how a 2014 book can feel so outdated, a testament to the lightning speed progress in science in the past decade.