BOOK BLURB:
Evocatively titled, Of Newtons and Apples: Insights into 50 Great Minds in Human History does exactly what it promises. It gives us a glimpse into the professional and personal lives of 50 great personalities whose names, in some cases, are a part of everyday conversation, while in others, they are familiar names about whom we know little. Just the way the falling of an apple led to major discoveries by Newton, this work tries to identify sources of the genius of the personalities across human history. These men and women were either creators or those who redefined the course of history in their field of work. Interestingly, each article focuses on a major achievement and one aspect of their personal lives. Such sharpness makes the articles short, engaging and, in many cases, poetic. The classification of personalities into Building, Doing and Thinking gives us new eyes to look at them once again and debate within ourselves, the fuzzy boundaries that exist between these three primary human activities.
BOOK REVIEW:
The stories about the personal and professional lives of these 50 great minds are really inspiring. Author Abhishek's writing shows he has extensively read and devoted hours of reading and understanding these inspiring people. Author Abhishek Kumar has tried to select pieces of useful information about them and their experiences and compiled all that together in this book form, to make it an interesting read and also curated a useful resource for all his readers. In this book, along with reading about these personalities, I could also read more on varied subjects like psychology and mathematics, languages like Sanskrit, meaningful discussion about the topics like beauty, art, memory, human relationships, innocence etc.
Some of my favourite chapters in this book are-Beginning of the end of Tabula Rasa, Unmerged richness merged in one, Two novel prizes, Two countries and one woman, Unleashing mysteries of childhood. I have read about John Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau in jurisprudence too but I could read more about their personal life in this book. Some of the personalities in the book were new to me as I’ve never heard about them before and glad could learn about them.
Author has kept the stories short while delivering the important messages about Building, Doing and Thinking, which makes it a gripping read. I would highly recommend this book to everyone. Recently I also got an opportunity to meet the author at his book signing event in Delhi.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Abhishek Kumar is Principal at the Army Institute of Management, Kolkata. He teaches courses on leadership, brand management, philosophy of language and philosophy of cities.
In his writings he generally explores the fertile spaces between personalities and disciplines, as can be seen in his articles on Gaston Bachelard, Roland Barthese and Herbert Marcuse. His doctoral thesis on the in-betweenness of Human Resources (HR) and marketing helped him in developing a scale to measure brand personality.
Dr. Abhishek Kumar studied economics at Calcutta University and went on to pursue MBA from Bharathidasan Institute Of Management Tiruchirappalli and PhD from Pondicherry University. His formal study of philosophy began during his Associateship at Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS) Shimla with analyzing a product from subject-object perspective which developed into a stream that may be called philosophical marketing. He spent the early part of his career in leadership positions in media, the telecom and banking industries before joining academia.
Comments
the creation of beauty is art.