Two books

There are these two terrific books that I'm interested in.

First book

Don't You Have Time to Think? by Richard P Feynman

Feynman's first wife had tuberculosis and died of it in 1945, spending her last months in a sanatorium in Albuquerque while he worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atom bomb. Feynman wrote to her every day; six weeks before she died, he wrote: "You are a nice girl. Every time I think of you, I feel good. It must be love. It sounds like a definition of love. It is love. I love you."

This has great charm. Feynman was widowed when he was 27, and 16 months later, he wrote another letter to his dead wife, which we are told bore the signs of repeated handling, ending: "My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. P.S. Please excuse my not mailing this - but I don't know your new address."

He was too high-spirited, however, to let this tragedy destroy him, and the following year he produced the work that won him the Nobel Prize.

Second book

The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identityby Amartya Sen

In this superb collection of essays, Sen smashes quite a few stereotypes and places the idea of India and Indianness in its rightful, deserved context. Central to his notion of India, as the title suggests, is the long tradition of argument and public debate, of intellectual pluralism and generosity that informs India's history.


There is this site called http://www.aldaily.com which one should visit if one is interested in reading sensible material.