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Book Review - Sunrise with Seamonsters by Paul Theroux  From literary criticism to a perspective on John McEnroe, Sunrise with Seamonsters has an eclectic collection of Paul Theroux' writings spanning twenty years. Mr. Theroux writes about Richard Nixon's memoirs and of a meeting with the man. There is a fawning piece on V. S. Pritchett and an admiring essay on V. S. Naipaul. I have yet to read In Sir Vidya's Shadow, but considering the sour relationship the two men have had, I expect to like it. The essays in this collection are chronologically arranged but there is no single theme. Mr. Theroux expounds on travel, politics, writers he likes, The Orient Express and the function of patronage in an artist's development. As a fan, I found some of the essays revealing about Mr. Theroux philosophy towards travel and writing. The Cerebral Snapshot is a persuasive argument against carrying a camera while traveling. The author's experiences as a teacher in Malawi, Uganda and finally in Singapore provide vivid context to his subsequent writings. An enjoyable work. Recommended. Labels: 2010, criticism, essays, july 2010, literary criticism, paul theroux, reviews, travel fiction
Book Review - The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux  I'm not as much a fan of Paul Theroux' fiction as I am of his travel writings but I wanted to read The Elephanta Suite for its cover photograph. What's so special about the cover you ask? It shows a vista that has now been crudely obscured by an ugly, if necessary flyover. The photograph shows Mohammed Ali Road, a center of Muslim life in Mumbai, scene of glorious mayhem, food and people, cars and scooters, everyone jostling for space. It is the neighborhood my dad grew up in and which I regularly visited all through my childhood. To the right is the Minara Masjid, where I have prayed with my dad, in the bottom right corner is Suleman Usman Mithaiwala, where I have shopped for sweets, and further down the street is Noble Opticians, my optometerists for twenty years. Unfortunately, Mohammed Ali Road has nothing to do with the book itself. The Elephanta Suite is a collection of three novellas, each set in a different section of India with only the slightest passing reference to each other. The three locations as separated by space as by culture. The first story takes place in an exotic mountainside spa, the second alternates between the posh hotels and seedy slums of Mumbai while the third unravels in Sai Baba's ashram and a call center in Bangalore. I'm not sure if I'm saying this as an interested party but I found Mr. Theroux' depiction of Indians less than fair. Admittedly, I don't have the perspective of an American in the Indian situations described by Mr. Theroux. However, the caricature of almost every Indian his American characters come across as money grubbing, self centered or sexually desperate seems quite harsh. The American characters are relatively more sympathetic, but no less pitiful - which begs the question, is this book just an exaggerated expression of Mr. Theroux' dour view of the world? I find it hard to conclude otherwise. I found the first novella weak but the denouement of the latter two is quite satisfying. Recommended. Labels: 2010, bangalore, fiction, ganesha, india, may 2010, mumbai, paul theroux, travel fiction
Book Review - The Quants by Scott Patterson  The one consistently recurring theme in The Quants is gambling. Ed Thorp, who according to Scott Patterson is the godfather of a quantitative based approach to investing is also the author of the Blackjack card counting classic, Beat the Dealer and the subsequent primer on a quantitative approach to investing - Beat the Market. Scott Patterson is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and in The Quants he tells the story of several different men (and a couple of women) who used their incredible quantitative skills to build some of the most powerful hedge funds of our times. The book begins (and ends) with what looks and sounds like a set piece, the Wall Street Poker Night Tournament, starring the kings of the quantitative universe - Peter Muller of PDT, Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group, Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management and Boaz Weinstein of Saba. Each of these men has made hundreds of millions of dollars on Wall Street using their mathematics backgrounds and each has a fascination bordering on obsession with poker. The way the book is set up, you get the impression this story will be told through this selected cast of characters, much like how in The Big Short Michael Lewis focuses his attentions on a small group of hedge funds managers to tell the story of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately, Mr. Patterson is not quite as skillful a story teller as Mr. Lewis. I quickly lost track of the main characters, as Mr. Patterson moves the spotlight to a long list of supporting cast members. There is Ed Thorp as I already mentioned, Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, Aaron Brown, Paul Wilmott, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bill Gross and others who are given attention is such a way as to interfere with the flow of the narrative. Another flaw of Mr. Patterson's style is that he does not seem to maintain a consistent style - there are some chapters where all the main protagonists are covered, there are some focused on a specific person and then there are some that are descriptive of a situation without focusing on any one character. This muddled style leads to an unsatisfying reading experience. Since I'm on a roll here, let me add one more criticism - The Quants manages to give only glimpses of the mechanics of how money is made by the Citadels of the world. It does not get technical, unfortunately. In spite of my overall disappointment with the book, I recommend reading it. It is a good introduction to the stars of the quantitative hedge fund world and at about 300 pages not irksome in length. Labels: 2010, april 2010, AQR, boaz weinstein, citadel, cliff asness, ed thorp, finance, ken griffin, non fiction, PDT, peter muller, quantitative finance, quants, saba, wall street
Quick Review - Ali and Nino, A Love Story by Kurban Said  Ali and Nino is a grand love story in the tradition of the grandest of love stories. There is childhood romance, warring families, murder and war - all rolled up neatly in a short 270 page book. I was led to this little classic through the enthusiastic recommendation of Paul Theroux who provides a glowing afterword in the current edition. It is the story of a romance between a Muslim, Ali Khan Shirvanshir and the lovely Christian, Princess Nino Kipiani. It is also the story of Ali Khan's confusion over his identity - is he Asian or European? Ali and Nino's romance kindles in the city of Baku as the city awaits its fate at the hands of the big European and Asiatic powers fighting all around it. Kurban Said, the book's pseudonymous writer is supposedly a composite of two distinct personalities - Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels and Lev Nussimbaum (whose profile on Wikipedia makes for interesting reading - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Nussimbaum). I enjoyed the book. Recommended. Labels: 2010, april 2010, azerbaijan, book review, fiction, kurban said, love story, paul theroux, reviews
Book Review - The Big Short, Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis  I just finished reading The Big Short, Michael Lewis' thrilling account of three hedge funds that managed to see the crisis in the financial markets years before others had a clue as to what was going on. At a mere 250 pages, I was skeptical. I like my books to be fat and detailed, an obviously unscientific measure that failed miserably in the case of Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail. Sorkin's essentially journalistic account of the events of 2007 and 2008 compares poorly with Mr. Lewis' work. At the very least, The Big Short gives a fleshed out account of the events that exacerbated the financial crisis through the actions of four major players - big Wall Street banks from Goldman Sachs to Merrill Lynch, the three major rating agencies, hedge fund managers who predicted the crisis, and investors around the world who got suckered into buying some really shitty financial products that they did not quite understand. We've heard two of these stories in the last couple of weeks - the Magnetar trade as covered by This American Life and ProPublica and the SEC case against Goldman Sachs involving ABACUS and John Paulson's hedge fund.The heroes of Mr. Lewis' account are a quirky group of hedge fund managers with rather unconventional backgrounds. It is testament to Mr. Lewis' abilities as a writer that you end up rooting for a bunch of guys who saw the delusion of the wider market and made hundreds of millions of dollars by betting against just about everyone. Dr. Michael Burry is a neurologist by training, has one functioning eye and suffers from Asperger's syndrome - he's the guy who saw the housing bubble coming back in 2003 and ended up making hundreds of millions through his fund, Scion Capital. Jamie Mai and Charlie Ledley were a couple of 30 year olds with no obvious training or talent in money management. They started a hedge fund from a garage in Berkeley and ended up making some legendary profits by successfully betting that the upper, double-A rated tranches of mortgage CDOs backed by subprime loans would fail. The third hedge fund manager, with a more conventional background was Steve Eisman of FrontPoint Partners. All of these talented but also lucky men were connected by another interesting character, Greg Lippmann of Deutsche Bank. If the idea of betting against the subprime mortgage industry was a virus then it originated with Dr. Michael Burry who infected Mr. Lippmann, who in turn spread it to a whole bunch of other money managers on and off Wall Street. So far I've given the benefit of the doubt to the TARP rescue package and its necessity towards 'saving the American ecnomoy'. After reading The Big Short, I'm not so sure. There are passages in the book that inspire incredulous disbelief. I'm not a fan of populist anger at a single behemoth called "Wall Street" but it is hard not to feel disgust at the greed and incompetence of some of the most gilded names in modern capitalism. The Big Short is required reading for anyone wishing to understand what happened on Wall Street in the last three years. Highly recommended. Additonal recommended reading and media Dr. Michael Burry's April 2010 Op-Ed in the New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04burry.html?scp=12&sq=burry&st=cse Michael Lews and Dr. Michael Burry on CBS News' 60 Minutes - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298038n&tag=contentBody;housing Dr. Michael Burry's "A Primer on Scion Capital's Subprime Mortgage Short", published in November 2006 - http://www.scioncapital.com/PDFs/Scion%202006%204Q%20RMBS%20CDS%20Primer%20and%20FAQ.pdf Labels: 2010, april 2010, ben hockett, book review, charlie ledley, cornwall, finance, frontpoint, greg lippmann, history, jamie mai, michael burry, michael lewis, scion capital, steve eisman, wall street
Book Review - Riding the Iron Rooster, By Train Through China by Paul Theroux  Reading Mr. Theroux' travelogue of Chnia made me realize I should know more of Chinese history than I do (which is practically nothing). School history textbooks in India focus mostly on local, state and national history. In higher grades you deal with European history, India's colonial past and some American history - for example, we learned of the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. Of communism, our textbooks focused mostly on the USSR. However, besides the common knowledge that China had a communist government and India fought a war with the Chinese in 1962, our history textbooks were woefully inadequate in their coverage of contemporary Chinese history.Mr. Theroux' twelve month journey through China takes place in 1986 and 1987, as the country is still dealing with the effects of Mao's Cultural Revolution. The author's journey, like many of his other great travel stories, begins in London as he heads to Mongolia by train. From Mongolia he takes a myriad of trains to explore the most far flung reaches of that immense country. From the freezing city of Harbin to the mostly inhospitable and deserted Tibetan Plateau. The book is funny, caustic and filled with the kind of absolute generalizations that Mr. Theroux excels at. He talks to fellow travellers, government orderlies, train conductors and hustlers in tourist towns. You get not just his perspective, but also of the people he meets and finds interesting. Unlike most of the author's other travels, he is forced to travel here with a Chinese "guide" who is there to ensure the author is not up to any kind of mischief. Mr. Theroux extracts his revenge by subjecting his handler to interminable train rides through the remotest parts of the Middle Kingdom. Because of the timing, the book also adds color to understanding the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. I learned a few things about the Cultural Revolution I was never aware of - my knowledge of that event is restricted to a few books and the Zhang Yimou movie, To Live. Some of the author's cultural observations are worth repeating - he ascribes a hidden meaning to they way the Chinese laugh, because they don't laugh with mirth but to convey something they'd rather not express verbally. The Chinese landscape is almost completely devoid of birds, trees and wild life - because the Chinese have cultivated and subjected all of the land to human use and eaten everything that can be masticated. And finally, the Chinese were enthusiastically adopting capitalism and the free market in the 1980s - it is not something that just happened. The last section on driving to Lhasa from Golmud is the funniest - it is filled to the gills with ridiculous comedy. I've often asked myself while reading a Theroux book, why does he do this? In this instance he is in a near fatal car crash and then spends the night in a prison like hotel with stairs covered in human excrement and run by a crazed looking Tibetan man. Maybe that's why. Highly recommended. Labels: 2010, april 2010, book review, china, cultural revolution, history, non fiction, paul theroux, reviews, tibet, travel, travelogue, xinjiang
Quick Review: Sailing Through China by Paul Theroux
 More a long essay than a book, Sailing Through China is Paul Theroux' report of his time on a cruise on China's greatest waterway, the Yangtze. Mr. Theroux is characteristically dark in his prognostications and reliably vitriolic in his description of fellow American travelers. I read this book as a prelude to Riding the Iron Rooster, a description of Theroux' travels by train through China. Recommended.Labels: 2010, china, march 2010, non fiction, paul theroux, travel, travelogue, yangtze
The Israel Lobby by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
 I recently saw an Intelligence Squared Debate where the motion called for the US to step back from its special relationship with Israel. Roger Cohen of the New York Times and Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University argued for the motion and in fact won the debate. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt makes a similar argument in a comprehensively researched and well written narrative. The genesis of the book was in an article commmissioned by the Atlantic Monthly in the fall of 2002. The authors worked on the project for about two years but their manuscript, incorporating most of the suggestions made by the magazine, was rejected in January 2005. The authors finally managed to publish the article in the London Review of Books in March 2006. The publication of the article led to a storm of protest and controversy, and severe criticism. The book represents the authors' attempt to respond to the criticism and to present a more detailed case with an extensive list of references and notes. The book is divided in two sections. Part 1 deals with the special relationship that exists between the United States and Israel. The authors examine the reasons advanced by defenders of the relationship - is Israel an important strategic asset or is it actually a liability to US interests in the Middle East? The authors think it is the latter. They also question the moral justification of continued US economic, military and diplomatic support of Israel. Part 1 also identifies the loose collection of lobbyists, journalists and special interest groups that are collectively called "The Israel Lobby". The authors are at pains to emphasize that these groups are not necessarily coordinated or centrally organized and they are well within their democratic rights to influence US policy in a direction they deem most beneficial to both the United States and Israel. Part 2 extensively discusses the affects of the lobby on US policy in the Middle East. It is in this section that the authors make their boldest claims. At least one of the conclusions, that the United States would not have invaded Iraq had the lobby not existed is difficult to accept. However, the authors make convincing arguments on the looby's potentially harmful long term affects on US interests in the Middle East. The chapters on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and its conduct of the 2006 war in Lebanon are essential reading. Debate about the relationship between the United States and Israel is unnaturally muted in the American media and this book makes a strong case for changing the status quo. The authors claim there is more debate within Israel than there is in the US media and their extensive bibliography is testament to that claim. I don't necessarily agree with all of the arguments made by Messrs Walt and Mearsheimer but this is an important book and I highly recommend it. Labels: 2010, iran, iraq, israel, lobby, march 2010, mearsheimer, netanyahu, non fiction, sharon, syria, US Foreing Policy, walt
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
 Dead Aid is a 150 page book with a 24 page bibliography - so it reads more like a long white paper than a book. Dambisa Moyo has an impressive resume, much alluded to in both the book jacket and the foreword by Niall Ferguson. The author has worked for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs and she has a PhD from Oxford University. Impressive no doubt. Even more impressive is the fact that she was born and raised in Zambia so her profile fits neatly into the "Solutions to Africa's problems by Africans" paradigm. The book itself makes its case almost clinically, backed up by statistics and research papers from an entire spectrum of economists. Dead Aid is divided in two sections, The World of Aid, which examines the 'aid-economy', the players and the harmful affects on African countries' dependence on western aid. The second section, A World Without Aid proposes several venues open to the developing countries in Africa to raise money and be independent - the most important being trade and raising capital from the markets. Ms. Moyo manages to connect a lot of different African ailments to aid, from corruption to dictatorship and she makes a convincing case. Her solutions make sense as well - at least to a strong believer in free trade like myself. The hopelessness of it all is that it is almost impossible to imagine the West will roll back its Aid of Africa model that has failed so consistently and for so long. The book's main weakness is that it makes for almost dreary reading. Ms. Moyo may be a brainy economist, she is not a writer. The book suffers from a dearth of wit and style. The author does try to indulge in a hypothetical by creating the composite African country of Dongo and examinig how the country may funciton if her suggestions were realized. But in the end her vision reads less like a fully realized painting and more like a stick figure drawing. I recommend reading the book, only because it serves as a starting point for examining the issue of tackling the many problems of the African continent. Labels: 2010, africa, aid, dambisa moyo, development, economics, economists, finance, microfinance, world bank, zambia
Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
 I had mixed expectations from Too Big to Fail. Considering we are still very much in the thrall of one of the worst financial crises of the past century, it is unfair to expect a single book to provide a complete perspective. Andrew Ross Sorkin does not attempt to explain how or why we got into the events of 2008. The book's objective is very clear - to chronicle what was happening in the financial markets during 2008. At this task, the book succeeds. It has an impressive cast, from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to the CEO of Lehman Brothers, Dick Fuld.About three quarters of the book is about the Lehman collapse. The author seems so focused on the investment bank that you get almost no visibility into what was happening at say Citibank or AIG, though AIG does get some attention. The book refuses to be technical with Sorkin sticking to a journalistic tone. That I think is this account's greatest shortcoming - if you hope to understand what specific problems were being faced by Lehman Brothers before its failure, the reasons it found itself under attack by short sellers, you won't find the explanation here. Ultimately, this book is a good record of what happened but I think my reading list needs a lot more books to understand the why. I'd give the book a half hearted recommendation Labels: 2010, andrew ross sorkin, book review, february, finance, financial crisis, lehman brothers, non fiction, review, wall street
Book Review - Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving
 I just returned from a trip to Andalusia and one of the books I should have read before I went is Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving (the other is South from Granada by Gerald Brenan). I was too overwhelmed by work and planning to get hold of these but I managed to finish the Tales on my way back from Spain. A little history of the book is in order here - Washington Irving was an American writer and diplomat. He wrote a biography of Prophet Mohammed and is also responsible for the short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which was adapted into a movie by Tim Burton. Mr. Irving stayed in the Alhambra in Granada for a few months in the 1820s. Copies of Tales of the Alhambra are on sale everywhere in Granada and the author is much celebrated in that town. I saw a statue, a special exhibitions on Irving's life and explored his living quarters in the Alhambra palace, carefully preserved by the palace management. The reason for Irving's celebrity is this book - widely credited with having put Granada and its beautiful palace on the map. So is the book, and by extension, the writer worthy of such adulation? I think not. Tales of the Alhambra is a loose collection of legends about the palace and essays by Irving on his experience of living in it. I found two main themes in the legends narrated by Irving, hidden Moorish treasure and forbidden love between the Muslim Moors and the Christian Spaniards. Some of the author's reflections are revealing and his description of the beautiful Palacios Nazaries is precise but the overall perspective is excessively romantic. A worthy read if you are planning to travel to Granada and the Alhambra, not otherwise. Labels: 2010, alhambra, andalusia, fantasy, february, fiction, granada, review, spain, washington irving |
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