The Goal: A Great Book

Have you ever read a business book that was so interesting that it made you turn pages to see what is going to happen next ? I have read a number of strategy books, books on what excellent companies do, books on what enterprising leaders do, but I have never read a business book such as this one.
The Goal takes a somewhat familiar concept of a loss making unit being told that his unit can no longer be afforded by the parent company due to its losses and will have to be shut down, with the loss of its entire work-force and him personally as well, unless, the plant can be turned around and show profits. In addition, the time and pressures involved in the job is causing incredible pressures in the marital life of the Plant Manager Alex Rogo (the book is written from his perspective), with the marriage showing strong signs of breaking down.
Now Alex knows that he has to increase profits, for which he has to show better sales and reduce inventories, but neither nor his managers are able to figure out how to. In addition, with the way that the plant is working, they are not able to execute orders on a proper ordered schedule, and when a major customers calls, they have to execute a rush order that in turn causes costs to go up. At this time, Alex remembers an old college mate of his who is a college professor in the area of operational effectiveness, but he is a very busy person and his mechanisms are also radical, going against most cost accounting. In the midst of all this, his wife goes back to her parent's house.
And then comes the change around. Based on the long-distance and 1 visit by the professor, Jonah, which causes Alex to push for the concept of using the Theory of Constraints to figure out what the changes are needed in the plant. He needs to increase throughput, reduce inventory and reduce operational expense, seemingly very logical steps, but extremely difficult to bring out.
And the real hard conceptual part starts, where Alex and his team figure out what constraints and bottlenecks actually mean, and have to try and overturn traditional accounting. They need to overcome the bottleneck, since the bottleneck decides the speed of throughput through a system. If work items are lined up at a bottleneck and are piling up, then the throughput of the system is slowed down. In addition, a good learning from the book was that a bottleneck can be a dynamic system, in the sense that any machine can be a bottleneck depending on how work items are getting piled up. This could even involved getting an older machine if it helps break up the bottleneck.
Once they are able to resolve this system, they find that the system starts to move more smoothly, order scheduling and predictability becomes more accurate and much shorter. The harder part is in convincing the management and cost accounting department about this new system, but even they are convinced by the new figures and sales starting to emerge.
At the same time, Alex Rogo is saving his marriage by starting again, giving time to his wife and starting the romance again. The book finally ends by everything getting solved, and leaves a long thought in the head about how to use this great system to help resolve things.

Asimov: Pebble in the sky

I really liked this book, and was even more amazed to discover that this was Asimov's first published novel, in the year 1950. I became a late fan of Asimov, well into the 10th year of my life before I picked up the first novel, and now I have read so many of them that I can be counted as a bona fide Asimov junkie. Pebble in the Sky is a novel that I have read so many times that it is a wonder that the book I own is not in tatters. This book is part of the Empire series, so called because these are a series of books published with happenings just before the Empire was formed.
Earth is a pretty down-trodden place, with a nuclear war in the past having confined large sections of the earth to be nuclear contaminated wastelands. Earthlings who had emigrated earlier had become spacers, living in large new worlds, with lifelines expanded to 4 times the regular. They detest Earth as a place of squalor, and it would be very difficult for a person from Earth to visit any of the spacer worlds. Even when traveling on Earth, they consider themselves superior.
Earth is ruled by a council with a Minister and his Secretary (a very ambitious person indeed and portrayed as extremely evil). Earth is not free, with an outpost of the Spacers holding actual power, although they don't interfere too much.
Like any other place without enough resources, and under the control of a foreign power who Earthlings know detest them, the local politicians want to be free of the spacers, and actually, in a far fetched idea, destroy them. This seems far-fetched since there are many millions of spacers to every Earthling, and their technology and resources are vastly superior. And yet, the politicians have a secret weapon, actually 2. There is the knowledge that because of their hardier constitution and with the changes in genetics due to nuclear devastation, there can be made bugs that will affect the spacers, and not the Earthlings (1950 is very early to be talking about biological warfare). The second secret weapon is more about a bit of fanciful science fiction, a device called the Synapsifier that can enhance the mental capability, but the device is not production ready and could adversely affect anybody using it. The final explosive mix to all this is the knowledge that Earth is rumoured to be the starting home of all of humanity, something that Earthlings believe in, but not the Spacers.
Into this cauldron of emotions come 2 different individuals. Joseph Schwartz is a tailor from 1949 who one day becomes the victim of a strange molecular ray from a science experiment. The ray takes him and dumps him many many years in the future, in the time period of the novel. The other is an archaeologist from the Sirius sector (a hotbed of anti-Earth feelings) who believes in the Earth is the Origin theory and wants proof.
On Earth, the Society of the Ancients, the governing body is suspicious of his goals and refuses to give him permission to dig in the holy areas. He also wants to see the Synapisifier, and the Society is very suspicious, but lets him meet the inventor. The inventor has been collaborating with the Society since he wants an exemption to the 60, a policy that decrees that all individuals over the age of 60 will be euthanized in order to conserve resources. He needs an individual to test his device, and he picks Schwartz, who is after all unknown. This device gives Schwartz many superior mental capabilities, including the ability to start to read other person's thoughts and make them do simple things.
The rest of the story is about how these gentlemen thwart the Society of the Ancients, destroy the plan of the Ancients and save humanity. In the meantime, Schwartz gets time to romance the daughter of the inventor, and eventually for the debt that humanity owes them, gets started a shipment of clean earth in order to make the Earth a bountiful place again.
The prose is very good, the narration of the mental battle near the end is extremely gripping.

Tom Clancy: Patriot Games

This novel was written in 1987, after The Hunt for Red October became a major success. It is supposed to be set before that book, and in here is described the series of events that would turn Jack Ryan into a major character, and get him to enter the CIA. The book is pretty tautly written, and I have read it a number of times.
This time when I was reading it, there are so many passages in this book that are relevant now. The description of terrorism, human rights, how society should fight terrorism without becoming a ruthless instrument itself, all these are very eloquently mentioned in this book. It was worth reading just to get a feel of all this discussions, and the book talks about Irish Republican terrorists, who are not known for mass murders. In the current context, we deal with terrorists who are inspired by the more violent teachings of Islam and do not shirk from mass murder, on a scale not seen before from terrorism.
In addition, there are passages about how to counter international terrorism, with an event where there is cooperation between French, British and American intelligence to hunt down terrorism, and how such international cooperation is necessary. There is also a mention of a French military tribunal secretly convicting some anti-French terrorists whose capture was also a secret, and even though this sounds illegal, it seems necessary. When the French had tried to do an open trial, the terrorists had subverted the trial through illegal means, and hence the tribunal. Sounds somewhat similar with the current plans to have a military tribunal to convict the Al-Qaeda detainees. And this is where we have a clash - the concept of rule of law and justice is deeply ingrained, but it is also realistic that the terrorists do not respect any of these. As the movie 'The Siege' so eloquently put it, you need information to stop a bombing, there is a guy who knows it but is not going to disclose, and as per current law, you cannot force him to do this. I am sure that no one would want to be a decision maker in such a case, what do you do ?
This book is about Jack Ryan, a historian and former marine, also involved with CIA in a small way. He is in London for research, when he sees an attack by terrorists. He jumps in, kills one, wounds another and the third escapes. Jack also gets injured. Turns out he saved the Prince, Princess of Wales and their baby from a kidnapping plot by the ULA (Ulster Liberation Army), an offshoot of the IRA. After some time, the wounded terrorist escapes while being transported.
After being much feted, he returns to the US and back to his regular job; somewhat uneasy about the terrorists coming to the US to get back to him. However, logic says that foreign terrorists have never attacked the US inside the country (thanks to the FBI as well) and their funding will be impacted if they do so.
Well, they do, and Jack's wife and daughter are severely injured, but recover. This pushes Jack over to the CIA for getting back at the terrorists the way he can, and soon makes a name for himself. In another major section of the book, the Prince and Princess want to visit Jack at his home when they are in the US. The terrorists, aided by a local terrorist group, manage to attack the heavily guarded home and kill off most of the defenders and temporarily capture all the inhabitants. However, they manage to get free and are chased by the terrorists over water, eventually reaching a naval base where the terrorists are all captured.
This is a very gripping book, and the section about Jack's unease with regard to society and its interaction with the terrorists is very gripping indeed.

Leon Uris: Exodus

This is a very dated book, in the sense it was released in 1958, and was not Leon's first book. That book was Battle Cry, about the US marines in the Pacific theatre of WW2. Exodus was published in 1958 and was a tremendous best-seller, being translated into 50 languages. I read this book, and soon after read the book 'O Jerusalem' by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, together giving me a very vivid picture of the struggles and tribulations involved in the creation of the state of Israel.
Exodus is the name of a ship used in trying to get a bunch of Jewish refugees to British controlled Palestine, over the quota allowed and with the British refusing to allow the refugees enter. At the end of the second World War, the Jewish population of middle and Eastern Europe had been decimated in the holocaust, and the true horrors of the Final Solution policy of the Nazis had been revealed.
In the early part of the 20th century, Jewish scholars and leaders had started seeing the land of Palestine as their god given destiny, and started movements to this land from the Jewish communities all over Europe and America. By the 30's and 40's, this movement had taken root, and more and more Jews were settling and buying land from the Arabs living there. A number of militant Jewish organizations formed, such as the Hagannah, Irgun, Stern, all with the purpose of getting the Jews to being treated as people with strength, and to aid in the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.
Exodus is the story of a few principal characters such as Ari Ben Canaan (modeled on Moshe Dayan; who served in the British army during WW2, and after that devising means to get Jews to Palestine by breaking the British quota), Kitty Fremont (an American nurse, she has been recently widowed; she develops an attachment to a German refugee, Karen Clement and eventually to Ari), Bruce Sutherland (a British army officer with a Jewish mother who witnesses the horrors of the concentration camps at the end of the war and eventually becomes an advisor to Ari), Karen Clement (who was a refugee having lost most of her family in the concentration camps, and who eventually is killed right at the end of the book by Arabic invaders), and Dov Landau (another refugee who lost his family to the Nazis, he has become an expert forger (using that to prevent death in the concentration camps; he falls in love with Karen and has a thirst for revenge).

Mario Puzo: The Godfather

I guess more people would have seen the Godfather movies rather than read the book; but let me start by saying that this is a great book. The book is a fairly gripping book, establishing both the history of why the godfather became the godfather (Vito Corleone), and also the birth of the next Godfather, Michael Corleone. It does meander a bit in between when trying to explain various things, but overall is a very taut book.
The book takes the Corleone family, one of the 5 mafia crime families and the tensions between them. The book explains the motives and the development of characters for some of the main characters of the book, Vito Corleone, Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, Connie, Kay (Michael's wife), Tom Hagen, and a few others, but whose characters are not so well developed.
The book also explains numerous mafia activities to people who may not be well-enough acquainted with some of these terms, terms such as button man, hitting the matresses, omerta, La cosa nostra, etc.
The story explains how a poor Italian immigrant, a man of quiet nature, but internally a very powerful individual, slowly starts to be seen as a man of power, a man of stature and one who can influence things. He can get his people justice, deferment from the army, rough justice against anyone who has harmed them and so on. While reading this book, it would not seem strange at all that all these activities are illegal :-), they just seem natural. Slowly, he starts to build an empire consisting of political connections, book-keeping, races, and many other vices including the illegal running of alcohol. However, even such people have their own scruples, such as being against prostitution and drugs.
And this is what brings him down and decides the rest of the book. Vito refuses help to another family seeking to expand in the drugs field, and provokes an assassination attempt in which he is injured, and which brings his violent son Sonny into the field as the interim leader (his other son Michael is outside the family business, being a decorated soldier). Hence, in a quirk of fate, Michael gets involved, kills 2 people and escapes the country. In the ensuing gang warfare, Sonny is killed and Vito Corleone, The Godfather, gets up from his sick bed in an attempt to ensure the safe return of his son Michael back.
Vito makes a deal in which he accepts Sonny's death and foreswears all vengeance (although he is perceived as weak due to this lack of revenge) in order to get Michael back. The aim of course is long-term, to get Michael to take the revenge after setting him up as the Godfather. The latter part of the book is about this effort; how Michael gains the power of the family, how he turns from being a loyal American to the head of a major criminal family, and how he eventually carries out the revenge (by killing a number of the opposition families leaders, and also killing his own brother-in-law for the role he had in getting Sonny killed).
It is only at the end where the author puts a touch about that these people are bad people, when you see that the women of the family are praying for their souls. The book also depicts women and the African-American community in a bad light, thus depicting the inherent racism of the Italian (and maybe others) community as of that time.

The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October was an incredible book. First published in 1984, it was at the time when there was a height of conflict and tension between the Western Alliance and the Soviet Union. The book launched the writing career of its author, Tom Clancy, and created a new hero, Jack Ryan. Tom Clancy used this hero in many of his following novels, but The Hunt for Red October was the one that started it all. It was turned into a movie starring Sean Connery in the iconic role of Marko Ramius, the commander of the Soviet missible submarine, Red October, and Alec Baldwin as the role of Jack Ryan.
The book was incredibly researched, and the story goes that the Kremlin ordered a huge quantity of books to try and overcome their greatest fear (a captain of a missile submarine has a huge amount of independence, something not given to any other offical in any submarine, which is why the Soviet submarines had a political officer as well), and the US administration tried to identify who could have provided the detailed research to Tom Clancy.
The story revolved around the defection of the crew of the Red October, a revolutionary new Soviet missile submarine that has a new stealth propulsion system, something that can provide a major advantage to the Soviets (for information, a ballistic submarine missile has incredible firepower, read this entry), as the missiles provide both a stealth first fire capability and a quick reaction retaliatory capability. The US has an extensive underwater sonar system designed to pick up traces of an incoming submarine, but with this new capability, Red October would be able to avoid getting detected, an immense strategic advantage.
Marko Ramius, a half-Lithuanian by birth has risen high in the ranks of the Soviet navy and is now trusted with the best submarine made by the Soviet Union. However, they do not know that he is a disgruntled man, since his wife's death at the hands of a well-connected doctor was unpunished; further, he believes that Red October would provide an immense strategic advantage to the Soviet navy. He decides to defect, and then sends a letter to the Navy Secretary informing of his intention to defect and sail to New Yoork Harbor. This letter reaches once he has set sail.
The panic stricken Soviets send the entire North Atlantic fleet after him, although they realize that sending the fleet within a 400 km distance to the American coast could be seen as a tremendous escalation, so they inform the Americans that Marko sent a letter claiming that he will launch missiles against the US, which is why the massive Soviet fleet is chasing him.
In a meeting with the US President and other officers, Jack Ryan, a new CIA analyst (supposedly joining the CIA in another novel, Patriot Games), mentions that maybe he is trying to defect. He is charged with the responsibility of coordinating this, as too many people actually don't believe him.
In order to make it seem that the submarine has actually sunk, Red October declares an emergency, and gets most of the crew off, with the captain staying behind in order to sink the submarine. However, in a gun-fight on board the submarine, a GRU (Soviet military intelligence) agent uses a gun against the captain and his officer, and tries to blow up the submarine. Ryan finally kills him after a gun-fight.
In another tension filled event, the captain of a Soviet attack submarine, and a former pupil of Ramius, recognizes the submarine he is trailing is the Red October and tries to sink it. The US subs accompanying the Red October are unable to fire back, but eventually Red October rams this submarine and sinks it. And finally the Red October is guided into a US navy base. And in order to convince the Soviets that it was Red October that sank, the Americans place a device on the deep ocean floor that convinces the Soviets.
This was a compelling novel, something that was very exciting to read and also approve of the detail that went into writing this book.

Jeffrey Archer: Not a Penny more, not a Penny less

This was the first Jeffrey Archer that I read, and this was the first one written by him way back in 1974. It was a slow starter, but slowly picked up by word of mouth, and eventually became a big hit. The book was a bit raw, since it was his first book, but was still extremely enjoyable. The book was not terribly thick either, and was thus a good read.
So what was the book all about? It was essentially about the revenge thought up by a cold, calculating mind, that of a Harvard graduate now teaching at Oxford against a swindler. The story starts with the swindle though up by a man who has made his money by high-level cheating; in this case, Harvey Metcalfe, sells a story about an oil stock just about to hit it big. He manages to swindle 4 people out of a considerable portion of their money; Stephen Bradley, a Harvard mathematics graduate now teaching at Oxford; Robin, a physician at Harley Street; Jean-Pierre Lamans, an art dealer; and James Brigsley, a presumably vacant young English lord.
So when Stephen Bradley finds that he is now holding dud oil stock, he wants to get his money back, not exactly revenge, he just wants to get his money back, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. He contacts the other 3 people swindled, and while initially they are unwilling to admit that they lost money, they eventually do so. He forms his own small army to get their money back. Part of the plan is that all the robbed will make their own plans to get the money back, and all of them will play their parts in each plan. The rest of the book is about how each of them make their own plans based on their own areas of knowledge, and start making a fool of Metcalfe. The amusing part is also about how they treat James Brigley as the only person who is presumably not smart enough to make his own plans; but eventually in a twist, due to romancing Metcalfe's daughter, he manages to get money back.
The last twist in the story is contained in the final 2 pages, so it is possible like I did so, where the last 2 pages were stuck together, and it is only when I read a different copy that I realized the final twist.