Reading List | Reading Marks a Leader

AVM Anil Golani (retd)

There is no denying the fact that people who read, do so because they not only want to satiate their thirst for knowledge, but they also have the proclivity to understand varied viewpoints. An important character trait of any leader is the ability to visualise and understand events and situations as they impact and affect others. And reading as a habit strengthens and builds this character trait of an individual. The other spinoffs of this habit are improved cognitive thinking, prevention of mental decline, reduction in stress and anxiety, increase in creativity and imagination and improvement in the confidence levels of the individual with the knowledge gained. Enhanced knowledge leads to informed decision making. Continuing with the series on essential reading for men and women in uniform, as also others in the realm of national security and strategy, this list covers six books that must be read.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond is described as, ‘A book of big questions, and big answers’ by Yuval Noah Harari. This Pulitzer Prize winning book explains how geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans and aboriginal Australians. With the availability of new information from scientific disciplines like genetics, molecular biology and biogeography plus behavioural ecology this book makes an effort to explain how history followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environment and not because of biological differences between people themselves. Tracing history since the evolution of human beings, to food production and domestication of animals, to the invention of writing and production of guns and steel, the intermingling of people between Europeans and native Americans and a journey around the contemporary world, this book is a deeply researched project that gives fascinating insights into the broad patterns of history since the last 13,000 years.

Patton by Alan Axelrod is one amongst the ‘Great Generals Series’, which gives an insight into the great General that Pat