The sun rises at 6 PM: Our book journey for October, 2021

In a plea to the Almighty, Rabindranath Tagore expresses his wish for a realm where wisdom and enlightenment are available to everybody. A place where knowledge in its purest form should not be confined or restrained, so that every member of the society can taste the freedom knowledge liberates you with. Enjoy our picks for the month of October and liberate yourself with the knowledge mastered.

What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School

By Mark McCormack

As straightforward as the title, the book teaches you why having a fancy school name does not guarantee success in business. Entrepreneurship has less to do with academic information gained and more to do with understanding people. To get ahead in any entrepreneurial effort, the key is to know who you're doing business with. It's worth spending some time figuring out what makes them tick. The author emphasizes on the importance of being in tune with your emotions. Feeling uneasy before closing a deal and applying brakes are normal, in fact learning to trust these responses can prove to be beneficial in practice. When we think about business executives, we think about men clad in expensive suits, running around, with barely any time for themselves. The author talks about how essential time management is, allocating time for everything – reading, playing with your kids, cooking, catching up with friends at a bar etc. Eventually, they will make time in your routine, which will help you run a much successful business.

• Learn about your teammates' personalities, views, and what makes them move in order to forecast their conduct.
• Distress and failure are cues to increase your efforts.
• Plan work and leisure with the goal of achieving practical harmony in mind, and stick to that pattern.

Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health & Happiness

By Dr. Qing Li

The author presents evidence from research that shows that forest bathing has a wide range of emotional and physical health advantages, including the potential to He, also offers practical advice on how to get the most out of a forest bathing experience, namely how to enjoy it with all of your senses — sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Forest bathing has been shown to have the best effects at the two-hour mark, but advantages can be achieved in as little as twenty minutes per day, according to studies. Dr. Li also offers tips on how to recreate this healing and multi-sensory experience in your own home spaces, such as bringing plants inside and employing appropriate incense aromas.

• Improve problem-solving skills and creativity.
• Reduce anxiety and other negative emotions.
• Boost positive emotions.‍

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World 

By Jack Weatherford

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, divided into three parts, deals with the situations that led to the creation of a figure like Genghis Khan, his rule and the situations after his death. The first part of the book discusses the socio-political and cultural situations that led to the rise of Genghis Khan and describes his rule. Then the next part deals with Mongol rule after Khan’s death and how the Mongol Empire rose to capture most of the world. The last part deals with the repercussions that the Mongol Empire has had on the Modern world. This book explains how Genghis Khan was more than just a conqueror and invites the audience to reevaluate Genghis Khan’s legacy to understand the true extent of his impact on the modern world.

• Khan’s empire has had a great impact on the modern world - with the connection between Europe and Asia strengthened, printing, literacy and trade increased across the board. 
• It was the Black Death of the 14th Century that led to the downfall of the empire. It depleted their military resources and reduced their commercial power. 
• The Mongol empire’s main aim was to speak humanistic ideals rather than to conquer, subjugate and rule.

The Secret World of Weather

By Tristan Gooley

Ever wondered how the early men and women navigated through weather, forecasted the climate eons before meteorological devices came into existence? They simply studied nature and picked up on the cues they dropped. The author explains that we get a better knowledge of weather patterns and our surroundings by carefully watching the complex interaction of wind, cloud, fog, temperature, rain, and many other occurrences. Our weather shapes our landscape, and our landscape shapes our weather. Everything we see in the skies reflects our current location. When we learn to understand the weather's indications, the weather becomes our map, demonstrating how it has shaped our towns, cities, woodlands, and hills. You'll never be able to look at your environment the same way again.

• Learn how to decipher cloud-based hints.
• Wind is an excellent indicator of the sort of weather that is on its way.
• Creatures and harsh weather might provide us with information about nature.
  

The Grid

By Matt Watkinson

What determines the success of a business? Is it the customers? Is it the people you work with? Is it values and the core driver of your company? Or is it mere numbers of growth and profit? Matt Watkinson, the author reveals the essential, indivisible ingredients at the heart of any business's success. Every business's success may be attributed to nine interconnected factors. This indicates that you will need to analyze your company's strategy from several perspectives. You'll be accomplished on your path if you can tap on all nine of these. The Grid offers clarity and confidence to your business decision-making by combining practical instruction with real-world examples.

• Reduce risk by taking into account the larger implications of key decisions.
• Determine the fundamental causes of business problems.
• Analyze the impact of market developments and use them to your advantage.

It Starts with Food

By Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig

The basis of sustenance is food and essentially adds to your health, which is any individual’s wealth. Or that’s how we grew up learning. In modern times, the access to food and technology’s assistance has changed the way we consume our nutrition. According to the authors, Humans can discern three flavor groupings: fatty, sweet, and salty. Fatty meals provide calories, sweets provide energy, while salty foods keep up our hydration levels. Humans enjoy certain flavors, and the food industry takes advantage of this knowledge to acquire a competitive advantage. So simply dieting or filling your body with empty calories won’t do the trick. The authors give step by step advice and reasoning to why you should avoid certain foods and why you should incorporate more of some into your diet.

• There are foods you need to avoid at all costs.
• There are foods you need to include more of in your diet.
• Get rid of these fad protein shakes and smoothies.

Chernobyl

By Serkhii Plokhy

The 1986 nuclear accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant shook the world about the disastrous aftermath and effect of a radioactive element. In Serkhii Plokhy’s book, Chernobyl, the author details what went wrong from the start, the later procedures and the repercussions of it. Plokhy goes on to equate the disaster and subsequent radiation emitted in the city to 500 Hiroshima bombings. Plokhy's fast-paced narrative immerses the reader in the sweaty, tense atmosphere of the Chernobyl command center on that particular evening when frailty and design flaws collided to such disastrous effect.

• Incompetency and heavy design flaw coupled with the slow response of the authorities made things this worse.
• High doses of radioactive materials have entered into the bodies of all inhabitants, reducing their life expectancy.
• A disaster can cause a nation to fall, as Chernobyl did for Soviet Union.

Skincare

By Caroline Hirrons

To provide readers with a better grasp of how skincare works, an explainer on the many layers of skin and what happens in each. "Having a rudimentary awareness of what goes on beneath your skin might help you comprehend how your skincare products operate," Caroline writes. She walks readers through the epidermis, dermis, and subcutaneous tissue without confused science words, stressing that understanding the principles of how the skin works help us identify what will work and what won't.  The book explains the procedures which help fit into everyone's busy schedules which are skincare feasible. Caroline dives right into the meat of the book with nearly 90 pages on skin routines and why they're so vital. It's broken down into sections like morning and evening routines, as well as image-led cleansing step-by-steps and Q&A sections on her most frequently asked questions from her blog.

• The author explains the importance of small procedures which make up the skin routine.
• The importance of cleansing, retinol, peels and dermatologist-approved products don't always deliver what they portray.
• Focusing her approach on all types of skincare pages. And steps to healthy skin.

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less

By Leidy Klotz

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less is about the importance of minimizing in order to grow. It talks about how overlooking subtraction can be a bad thing. Subtraction is one of the most basic ways of introducing change to any situation, just like addition. As such, by subtracting a factor, we can see a situation in a completely different light and probably find a solution to our problem. This overlooking is also the reason why we tend to find our lives cluttered, be it our calendars or our inboxes. It is important to understand that bigger doesn’t always mean better - it is important to edit the parts of our lives that are causing us problems rather than adding more variables to them to try and solve them. Sometimes, the key to creating change is subtraction rather than addition.

• Subtraction is an important way to create change that humans tend to overlook most of the time - this is what clutters our life and creates more problems. 
• Bigger is not always synonymous with better - sometimes the key to changing a situation is to remove a present variable rather than adding a new one. 
• Adding and Subtracting are not mutually exclusive.

Waste Not Everyday: Simple Zero-Waste Inspiration 365 Days a Year

By Erin Rhoads

Moving towards a zero waste lifestyle has been gaining popularity in the past few decades. The advantageous life practices have benefits including saving the world from a climate catastrophe to saving a few bucks. Waste Not Everyday is a step-by-step guide to 365 simple adjustments which would not only affect everything you toss out but will have a significant impact on our planet's survival. The author, Erin Rhoads, provides the readers with simple recommendations that will contribute to a genuine shift in attitudes and action, demonstrating that a zero-waste lifestyle is truly possible — for everyone, on any budget, and on any schedule. The book guides you on a gradual path towards a life with less waste and more purpose, with advice ranging from actions and inspiration to recipes and resources.

• Learning how to reduce, reuse and recycle the right way.
• Easy steps to reduce single-use plastic and your dependence on plastic as a whole.
• Your entire life can light up with a little less waste.

Emotional Agility

By Susan David

If you're like millions of individuals worldwide, you believe that nothing in life ever goes as planned. But what if it wasn't such a huge deal? What if it was...fun? Being emotionally stable and mentally strong is not something that is a privilege many can enjoy. There are many triggers affecting emotions and initiating emotional turbulence in the world today. Emotional Agility is a revolutionary, science-backed strategy to manage life's numerous obstacles and diversions on your route to satisfaction, in which you will confront your emotions, examine them objectively, make decisions based on your beliefs, and gradually alter your mentality, motivation, and habits. The author, Susan David is a PhD Harvard psychologist and researcher distilled decades of research, coaching, speaking, and consulting expertise into a book - Emotional Agility. She devised a four-step technique to assist us in allowing our emotions to support, rather than dominate, our outcomes.

• Face your true sentiments, rather than ignoring the unpleasant ones.
• Remove yourself from emotions in order to perceive your genuine possibilities.
• Set goals that mirror your fundamental values using your founding principles.‍

An Astronaut’s Life to Guide on Earth‍

By Chris Hadfield

Being an astronaut is no child’s play. It requires rigorous training, extensive understanding of space and laws of physics and a lot more unpredictable things. Astronauts must be mentally disciplined. You should always be prepared for any circumstance. This is what NASA's training focuses on. When anything goes wrong, the cool yet demanding manner in which these individuals are taught overrides the normal fight-or-flight response. This even helps them improvise when things go wrong on a mission and they need to move quickly to save their lives. The book goes on to talk about each aspect of the training and how using them in life on Earth can prove to be highly beneficial.

• Living in space necessitates extensive planning, which is essential for living a happy life on Earth regardless of what you do.
• To be a space explorer, you must learn to accept criticism, which is a skill that we can all master to be happier.
• Coming back to the ground after being in space is stressful, but it also provides astronauts with a fresh perspective and sense of gratitude.
  

The Burnout Fix

By Jacinta M. Jimenez 

Stanford trained psychologist, Jacinta M. Jimenez was faced with an experience of burnout when she had to juggle studies, lab reports, assignments along with taking care of her brother when he met with an accident. This led Jimenez to read and research more about what burnout is and wrote a book on how to fix it when you find yourself burnt out. Jiménez provides methods in this practical guide to prevent burnout from occurring. She contends that the answer is to promote resilience on both an individual and organizational level. One can learn to live a more purpose-driven life and promote the well-being of your team members by using her science-backed methods. Strangely, the key to managing this increasingly complicated terrain is a basic set of core characteristics on which you can rely for years to come.

• For starters, practicing mindfulness can help us minimize stress and the danger of burnout.
• In order to be successful, you must seek out significant relationships.
• Discovering your own objective will motivate you to improve while also keeping you on pace.

Emotional Agility

By Susan David

If you're like millions of individuals worldwide, you believe that nothing in life ever goes as planned. But what if it wasn't such a huge deal? What if it was...fun? Being emotionally stable and mentally strong is not something that is a privilege many can enjoy. There are many triggers affecting emotions and initiating emotional turbulence in the world today. Emotional Agility is a revolutionary, science-backed strategy to manage life's numerous obstacles and diversions on your route to satisfaction, in which you will confront your emotions, examine them objectively, make decisions based on your beliefs, and gradually alter your mentality, motivation, and habits. The author, Susan David is a PhD Harvard psychologist and researcher distilled decades of research, coaching, speaking, and consulting expertise into a book - Emotional Agility. She devised a four-step technique to assist us in allowing our emotions to support, rather than dominate, our outcomes.

• Face your true sentiments, rather than ignoring the unpleasant ones.
• Remove yourself from emotions in order to perceive your genuine possibilities.
• Set goals that mirror your fundamental values using your founding principles.

The Design of Everyday Things

By Don Norman

Ever notice how certain products don’t seem enticing or lack user friendly features even if the product or the service offered is exemplarily good? Taken from the visionary ideas of the innovator Steve Jobs, Don Norman centers on comprehending the interactions between people and the resources they employ in the book. He talks about two main aspects when it comes to the designing aspect of the product - discoverability and affordance. While affordance may vary from individual to individual, discoverability is the simplicity in which an item expresses its own attributes. When humans come into contact with an object, they don't necessarily understand and apply it. The designer's role is to act as an intermediary between what people understand and what they need to do to correctly use the object.

• Design plays an important role in the life of a product. 
• When a problem comes up, they are not the result of human fault, but of deficiencies in functionality and usability.
• Designers don’t simply create products; but fulfill experiences.

The Art of Stillness

By Pico Iyer

A world traveler and travel writer releasing a best-selling book on thinking and sitting quietly in a room, calling it the ultimate adventure. Sounds absurd right? Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness throws in a compelling argument through examples revealing the benefits of decelerating and staying in one location. The thrill of traveling nowhere but within ourselves. Presently, we are racing against the clock in quest of contentment and significance. This is essentially a prescription for assuring that we will never be pleased. We are often taught by academic institutions that we have to reach somewhere, and specifically be nowhere. But the book beautifully details how one can find richness in staying still. Finally, the author demonstrates that, in this era of perpetual mobility and connectivity, remaining in one place may be a more thrilling possibility and a larger necessity than ever before.

• Going to a quiet place can help you gather pieces of your mind, compose yourself and refresh life with the vitality and energy.
• Writers and spiritual practitioners have pursued the art of stillness, not just monks.
• Just a few minutes of being alone and quiet can be life-changing.

The Lean Startup

By Eric Ries

If you’re planning to start a venture or ever want to start one, this book might be the fool-proof plan for you. The Lean Startup offers a semi-scientific, meaningful approach to constructing a firm through validation, identifying a lucrative business model, and developing a powerhouse.  Eric Ries, an American businessman, blogger, and author, has blended the lessons learnt from leading startups with the concepts of lean manufacturing to establish a method for building new firms that is resource efficient and successfully uses creative potential. This book will show innovators how to deal with high uncertainty by putting scientific theories to the test using a minimal viable product (MVP). Rather than complex business strategies, The Lean Startup provides a framework for entrepreneurs to experiment, discover, and adapt their approach through a process of continuous improvement.

• Entrepreneurship is a discipline that may be learnt.
• A startup's purpose is to figure out what to develop - what consumers want and will spend for – as rapidly as feasible.
• Consumers do not express their desires to us. They demonstrate the truth by their actions or inaction.

Falling into Grace

By Adyashanti

Why does humankind face perpetual hardships and sufferings? Why is it a constant reality that puts us into immediate fear and controls our behavior so much that everything that we do is to essentially avoid hardship as much as possible? The book talks about letting go of our struggles and being filled with awareness with higher scales of mindfulness. In his early years as a spiritual teacher, Adyashanti has discovered that the simpler the instruction, the stronger its potential to trigger this enlightenment.  In Falling into Grace, he expresses what he believes are underlying words of wisdom that will spark a paradigm shift in the way we deem life. We can succumb into the beauty and truth of who and what we truly are in about the same manner that we fall into the embrace of a beloved one or lay our heads on the pillow at night.

• Why is spiritual awakening such a difficult process?
• Connection and availability is the sense of complete oneness with every aspect of our experience.
• Receive true autonomy - the one-of-a-kind manifestation of our own sense of liberty with yourself.

Bored and Brilliant

By Manoush Zomorodi

Boredom is often mistaken for being lonely or idle, brewing negative emotions in one’s head. But staying occupied at all times doesn't really give you creative solutions to a problem. If you’re like most people, you get most of your ideas when you’re taking a long shower or taking an aimlessly long stroll. This is because your mind isn’t occupied and it’s free to think more creatively of every possible solution. Bored and Brilliant expands upon the research by demonstrating how we may rethink our device use in order to live better and wiser in this modern digital ecology. Manoush's book is grounded in the neuroscience and cognitive psychology of "mind wandering"—what our minds do when we're getting nothing done - includes pragmatic steps you can take to alleviate the never-ending hustle and bustle and improve your ability to envision, question, and think logically in your work and life.

• Technology is incredibly helpful, but it can do a great deal of harm, too.
• Breaking away from tech can give space to get bored and in turn boost creativity
• Boredom is not a negative emotion, but rather it can help you unlock your potential strengths.

Extra Life 

By Steven Johnson

In the past year, we saw how a pandemic changed the entire way we view our normal fast-paced world. But it also brought to light how the medical industry toiled day in and out just so many of us could survive and live past this nightmare. Throughout the decades, the advances of modern development - be it medical breakthroughs, public institutions or even technology, have extended us each roughly 20,000 additional days on average. Extra Life is an homage to the lasting power of shared aims and public resources. The greatest fundamental improvement we have seen in recent decades has not come from large enterprises or start-ups. Instead, it has come from advocates of change, university-based and publicly financed scientists publishing their results openly, and nonprofit organizations disseminating new inventions throughout the world.

• It took a lot of work to make milk, automobiles, vaccinations and medicines extremely safe for us.
• There is a lot of work that went behind every “eureka” moment.
• Doubling of our life expectancy has a lot of credit accredited to a lot of products and people who worked on them for over hundreds of years.

Unfinished Business

By Anne-Marie Slaughter

Women, post-marriage and kids are often posed the question, “Can you ‘have-it-all?” or even “Are you a working mother?”. While these questions may seem harmless, the connotation following these try to question if women can handle all their responsibilities well or even a much sexist meaning following that a child’s responsibility is fully the mother’s to take. Anne-Marie Slaughter deconstructs the 'half facts' that underpin this assertion, investigating how the effort to balance progressively incompatible life and work responsibilities is exacerbated for women owing to the ongoing gendering of caring. Slaughter, through her personal experiences, urges us to develop a more profound and mutually beneficial relationship across career - life.

• Striving to be a Superwoman or a Supermom with an excellent career streak can make life hell.
• The way each of us speak have a scathing impact on people, especially women around you.
• Changing work culture and creating a lifelong partnership can help, but need to strive for it by leading.