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Archives: Books

Hacking Health

We live in a world where there is a new fad diet, superfood, supplement or nutrition theory every month. There are so many tricks to optimizing workouts, peak performance, burning fat, living longer, sleeping better and biohacking your immune system. Wellness has become a part of mainstream discourse like never before, and the result is an overwhelming barrage of seemingly contradictory information.

But here’s one simple truth: good health impacts every aspect of life, be it productivity at work, interpersonal relationships or a balanced family life. In Hacking Health, Mukesh Bansal takes on the mammoth task of demystifying the science, simplifying the research and tracing the story of our relationship with our body. Through a combination of personal experience and cutting-edge science, this is a book that draws from ancient wisdom and also debunks unscientific myths to help you make smart choices in pursuit of good health. From nutrition and fitness to sleep and immunity, weight management and mental health to ageing and longevity, this book delves into the breadth and depth of holistic health and helps you navigate the lines between science and pseudoscience.

Can we use science to hack the human body’s functioning and be our most efficient, fittest and happiest selves? Hacking Health takes a 360-degree approach to answer this very question and help you unlock your body’s potential.

How the Mango got its Magic

We all love the sweetness of mango and how it quenches our thirst on a hot summer day, but have you ever wondered how the mango got its magical sweetness?

The tale of how such sweetness came into existence is a fascinating one indeed. India’s favourite storyteller brings alive this delightlful tale with her inimitable wit and simplicity. Bursting with captivating illustrations, this gorgeous chapter book is the ideal introduction for beginners to the world of Sudha Murty.

Misfit Madhu

Madhu is a shy middle-grade developer who spends her holidays creating her dream app, ‘School Santhe’. Soon, the app goes viral…and so does she! And why not? After all, an app where everyone at school can trade stuff is the app they’ve all been waiting for! Madhu now sets her sights on winning the GoTek young developers contest.

But when School Santhe is used to sell leaked test papers, she’s faced with the hardest decision of her life:
a) Shut down the app that made her popular?
b) Or stay silent and become part of something…criminal?

As her dreams begin to crumble – with the entire school now blaming her for the mess her app has caused – Madhu realizes that sometimes, it’s far easier to debug an app than it is to debug your life!

Sinbad and the Tomb of Alexander (Sinbad Series, Book 2)

EVIL ALWAYS FINDS ANOTHER WAY

You would think having saved the world from Armageddon would have its perks, but sadly there are no happily ever afters. Because evil never sleeps. We battled the Angel of Death and prevented the trumpet of Israfil from being blown. But Iblis, the Devil King, is after yet another artefact that can bring him back to life.

Now my crew and I race against time to find the famed Water of Life. And as luck would have it, it is said to be hidden in the legendary tomb of-wait for it-Alexander the Great. What fate!

So here I am again, Sinbad the Sailor, pitted against Viking warriors, immortal Chinese alchemists, haunted isles and murderous golems, creatures of the dark . . . you get the drift. Then there is the Lame Archdemon, Admiral Sakhr, a foe far more sinister than I have ever encountered.

And on top of it all, my friends seem to be drifting away from me, as is the love of my life, Safeena, Iblis’s daughter.

Bestselling author Kevin Missal’s second book in the Sinbad series is a thrilling reimagination of the fabled sailor from the classic One Thousand and One Nights!

The 10 New Life-Changing Skills

The earlier 3 Industrial Revolutions (3IRs) created blue collar and white-collar jobs, which required people to carry out instructions, not question authority and follow time tested systems and processes.
Now, we are in the midst of the 4th Industrial revolution (4IR), also called Industry 4.0. It is creating ‘green collar’ jobs, which need people to ‘think, reflect and act’. To develop these abilities and perform the green collar jobs efficiently, it is critical that professionals develop certain skills -the 10 new life-changing skills:

1. Creativity
2. Innovation
3. Critical Thinking
4. Framing the Right Question
5. Smart Problem-Solving
6. Lifelong Learning
7. Storytelling
8. Influence Without Authority
9. Humanness
10. Entrepreneurial Spirit.

This book will introduce readers to these skills, which they can apply in their businesses and professions to come up trumps.

The Wisest Owl

India is witnessing a major change in the way we look at money. Having reached the middle income status as a country, a vast section of the youth is now aspiring for higher financial goals. This large population is breaking away from its parents in almost every way, including financially. But the new generation of Indians entering the workforce demand more knowledge on their investments. They constantly grapple with complicated questions surrounding money: What do they do with their money? How do they plan for their future? Most of the time, they get bad advice. Mutual funds have not really delivered meaningful returns, stock selection is extremely complicated and sophisticated investments like PMSs, AIFs, etc., are only for the wealthy.

This book tries to help these young investors by offering them a framework they can use to create wealth in the long run. Using the wisdom and experience of Indian’s top personal finance professionals, the book answers critical questions, such as: Should I rent a house or buy a house? Passive investing versus active investing? Stocks versus mutual funds? Debt funds or FDs? And finally – crypto or no crypto?

The Many Lives of Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna

Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, an internationally renowned Carnatic musician from the illustrious musical lineage of composer Saint Tyagaraja, wore many hats in his lifetime. Having made a stage debut at the age of seven, he was hailed as a child prodigy. From then till the time he passed away, at age eighty-six in 2016, he continued to be in the spotlight, not just for his extraordinary talent and versatility as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, but as a composer, playback singer and even, briefly, as a character actor.
He was a primary school dropout, a teenage poet and composer, a restless mind, a polyglot, a legacy upholder, a wordsmith, an ice cream lover and a pathbreaker. This is a story of the many lives of Dr Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna.
Veejay Sai’s in-depth research into his life and work led him deep into unseen archival material and across the Carnatic musical landscape of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Fortified by interviews with his family members, disciples and peers, The Many Lives of Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, a definitive biography of the musical genius, is not only a revealing account of the personal traits and facets of an unparallelled genius, but is also a portrait of India’s classical music world, a place as much of beauty as of untrammelled egos.

Leaders in the Making

Leaders in the Making includes in-depth interviews of thirty HR leaders, drawn from public as well as private sectors. These life stories provide highlights of their early childhood, education and career over the years, and touch upon the inflexion points in these leaders’ lives, their major influences and the lessons they learnt to become who they are. The authors provide an analysis of these thirty stories to establish a pattern of the life journeys, competencies and values these leaders displayed.

The book has excellent lessons for parents, heads of schools and colleges, teachers, managers, HR leaders, CXOs and CEOs. It also includes self-help tools to assess competencies, values and the careers of readers so that they can plan for self-development.

The Dolphin and the Shark

The Dolphin and the Shark is born out of Namita Thapar’s experiences of being a judge on Shark Tank India and running the India business of the pharma company Emcure as well as her own entrepreneurship academy. The book emphasizes how leaders of today need to strike a balance between being a shark (aggressive leader) and a dolphin (empathetic leader).

It is divided into fifteen chapters which focus on various business mantras. The author shares personal stories, anecdotes about Emcure’s evolution over the years as well as learnings from entrepreneurs who have inspired her. The Dolphin and the Shark also includes references to pitches from Shark Tank India‘s Season 1. Straight from the heart, candid and authentic, this book will inspire and motivate every reader to push their limits.

The Song of the Cell

From Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene, The Song of The Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer’s exploration of what it means to be human-rich with Siddhartha Mukherjee’s revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and all the patients whose lives may be saved by their work.

In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, look down their handmade microscopes. What they see introduces a radical concept that sweeps through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences and altering both forever. It is the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves-hearts, blood, brains-are built from these compartments. Hooke christens them ‘cells’.

The discovery of cells-and the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem-announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer’s, dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID-all could be viewed as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies.

In The Song of the Cell, Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. He seduces readers with writing so vivid, lucid, and suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling. Told in six parts, laced with Mukherjee’s own experience as a researcher, doctor, and prolific reader,

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