About the Author - June A Valladares started her career as a journalist, but soon switched to a relatively short but exciting career in advertising. June has worked at Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA), at J Walter Thompson and later at Lintas India Limited, now Lowe.

Written in first person, Ideate with June a Valladares takes an insightful look at the process of creativity and deliberates on the very idea of ideation.

Through this book, the author zeroes in on the fact that the creative process is inherent to everyone. The author also dwells on diverse elements like religion, spirituality, psychology and sociology and underlines simple qualities like patience, imagination, and faith. And it is through these illustrations that Valladares arrives at an even simpler truth that creativity is intrinsic to us all. It's just that we often overlook the very instances that lead us to it. The book is an attempt at showing the readers how they can ideate better than they already do.

Another aspect of the book is that it has an array of inspiring quotes from the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jacob Bronowski and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Interspersed with examples of some real-time brilliant ideas, which may seem mundane or otherwise impossible, the author drives home the point that a discerning idea can pop up from nowhere. One just has to recognise it and believe in it.

The author also dwells on basic questions like what are ideas, who needs them and how does one get them? The book serves as a one-stop-shop for those who are looking at creating altogether new ways of thinking and living.

It illustrates ways to tap into a sustained flow of good, solid ideas that will help in both, our personal and professional lives. It introduces not only an altogether new way of thinking and living but, more significantly, prompts each one of us to delve deep into our self so that we can discover that creative spark within us.

Simple language and explanations makes this an easy read and is a must for those who believe in the power of ideas.

Short background about the author
"William Dalrymple understands India, Indian history and his readers in
ascending order. That is what makes him a very good writer and a reasonably sound historian writing on South Asia. The fact that his writing is not determined by academic exigencies such as the pressures of a thesis, the load of a prejudice or the hassles of artificial deadlines allows him the supreme freedom of choosing a topic and going all out to collect sources. And the fact that he deliberately writes for a larger audience than the incestuous circle of South Asian historians, allows him to present history in a form that is at once not intimidating to the layman and very challenging to the more professional practitioner of the craft.

"The Last Mughal"
It is a biography of the last Mughal Emperor (that is the romantic side of Dalrymple) but it is firmly rooted in the social, political and cultural changes of the times (that is the historian and the story teller in Dalrymple). It is a voluminous book, but its essence both as a literary and a history treatise can be captured a few short paragraphs:

1. It fills up a major lacuna in the historiography of India in the
sense that it supplements the works of Erick Stokes (for Northwestern
Provinces, modern UP) and Rudrangshu Mukherjee (Awadh) among others,
who have undertaken in depth regional studies to bring to light the complexities
of the Uprising of 1857. Before "The Last Mughal" Delhi was, rather, strangely, left out of such in depth treatment.

2. For less strange reasons, Bahadur Shah Zafar never enjoyed the
attention that his more illustrious forefathers received from Indian historians. Although, in many senses, he presided and lived through over a complex socio-political transformation that few of his predecessors except perhaps Babur did. Dalrymple successfully puts the focus back on this "black sheep" of the family.

3. Finally, and this is very important, Dalrymple clearly shows how complicated simple social divisions like class, caste, race, gender and loyalties were before, during and immediately after the mutiny.

4. In terms of substance, the book is rich is use of sources, nuanced in its arguments and very textured in the way that arguments and substantiation are knitted together.

From a historian's perspective:
Another new regional study on the events of 1857 - filling up a major void; unearthing of new sources - another big contribution to the historiography. But nothing new in terms of argument. Believe you me, we already knew the broader arguments around race and religion. In fact, Dalrymple's extra leap to connect the Jehadis of 1857 to
their current cousins seems like what it really is - a giant and unnecessary leap.

From a reader's perspective: That is the way to write history, each
character stands out on its own. And although it will not be apparent
to an ordinary reader, a trained eye will not miss the hard work that must
have gone to flesh out each character with such meticulous detail. And Oh
boy! What a style of writing - captivating to say the least. It does read like a
best selling thriller.

Lessons for the historian: "Isn't that the way we should write our
history so that more and more people read and understand what really happened and how?"

Book Review by - Anand Gurnani

Think Disney and the following automatically comes to your mind

1) Animation & family entertainment
2) Media Conglomerate

Think Disney again and you probably will think about Michael Eisner vs Roy Disney - the boardroom battles reported every day on the front pages of international business dailies.

DisneyWar by James B. Stewart, one of America's most acclaimed journalists, zooms in on the changing equations between the powerful people at Disney during the last two decades. As the title aptly describes, the book is an inside story of what drove the iconic entertainment company to a civil war.

The boardroom battles however are not the only high point of the book. DisneyWarhas a multidimensional pull. The fascinating thing about the book is that it demonstrates the extent of influence that Individuals at the helm of large Media Conglomerates can have, over decisions that alter the history of popular culture. Even more interesting is the background of the action which is Hollywood, Animation, Broadway, Theme Parks, Television Networks and the entire entertainment sphere; all this viewed from the seats of power.

The book throws light on the past 20 years of Eisner's tenure at Disney during which the company had 10-12 individuals who served in various capacities and later since moved on to lead major corporations in Hollywood and beyond. These include Dreamworks Animation Chairman and CEO Jeffery Katzenberg, Comcast President Steve Burke, Revolution Studios Chairman Joe Roth, NFL networks CEO Steve Bornstein, Yahoo Media & Entertainment head Lloyd Braun, Hilton Hotels Chairman and CEO Steve Bollenbach, eBay Chairman and CEO Meg Whitman, Martha Stewart Omnimedia CEO Susan Lyne and Former Chariman of 20th Century Fox Bill Mechanic.

DisneyWar closes in on the changing equations that Eisner had with these individuals before, during and after they were at Disney. Add to that the changing equations with Pixar and Miramax and you have a blockbuster Book which no media & entertainment professional would be able to resist reading.

Yet another aspect of the book is the first hand knowledge quotient that it offers in terms of the subject and background being entertainment.Sample the following memo issued by Eisner while still at Paramount:

"We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money. It is important to make history, to make art or to make some significant statement....In order to make money, we must always make entertaining movies, and if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, make art, a statement or all three. We may even win awards... we cannot expect numerous hits but if every film has an original and imaginative concept, then we can be confident something can break through"

Or sample Eisner's singles and doubles formula for making films:
"We should generally resist making expensive overall deals with box office stars and top directors because we can attract then with strong material later on." During the course of his career however, the same Eisner who issued these memos did sanction quite a few event movies (as he referred to big budget, top stars and director movies).

Identical to Eisner's career graph just before he got into Disney and while there, the book takes off with an exciting part and the tempo stays upbeat until somewhere in the middle where the book begins to drag a bit, gradually hovering towards a dramatic climax.

Overall the 538 page non fiction saga is definitely a compelling read.

About the author

Chris Grey is Reader in Organizational theory at the Judge institute of Management, University of Cambridge.and Fellow of Wolfson College. For about six years he was Editor-in-chief of Management Learning and is European Co-editor of the journal of Management Inquiry.

Book Review
Simply put, the book is an scholarly effort on understanding organizations and their different management styles. So, with an extremely difficult and boring task at hand; the author finds a easy way out. He somehow smartly manages to skip all the indecipherable jargon and takes a rather personal approach to the subject.

Chris Grey argues that, in a way, studying organizations is akin to really understanding every facet of human life; which is what makes it incredibly interesting. It's all about studying ideas, theories, models and values which shape organizations and in turn affect people. To quote him the author verbatim - `organizations matter because just about everything that we do occurs within an organization.'

The first few chapters take a look at the types of organizations which go a long way in defining people efficiency. Like, if it's a bureaucratic setup then it naturally saps energy and initiative. From describing the different types of organizations, Grey has delved deep into issues like - motivation, leadership, teambuilding, harassment at workplace, exploitation, unequal power relations and sabotage.

The book is simple but definitely not simplistic. The authors' style of writing is argumentative, provocative and irreverent. Some of the interesting chapters are - What is rationalism? Bureaucratic dysfunctionalism and Taylorism and What is it to be human?

Though, at times, the book gets a bit too heavy but then the author tries to simplify by drawing in references from different walks of life. While drawing parallels between life and organizations, he draws examples from the life of Hitler and Nazism, references to cricket, quotes from luminaries in various fields. In fact, each chapter begins with an apt quote and foretells what the chapter is going to elucidate. God and the Church, Kafka, Taylor - all are found in here. Geographically not bound to any location, he has brought in case studies from across the globe.

Definitely recommended for executives who're grappling to understand their own organizations!

About the Author - Walter Vieira is the President of Marketing Advisory Services Group, which he founded in 1975. Prior to that, he spent 14 years working with various corporations - Glaxo, Warner Lambert and the boots Company.

Vieira has authored ten books of which three were written jointly with C Northcote Parkinson and M K Rustomji. His most recent books include The Winning Manager and Successful Selling.

The book is a sequel to the authors' earlier book - The Winning Manager which covered the period of an exec's life from being a trainee to the middle management. But the real challenge is when senior mangers clamber to rise up the corporate ladder and try to ssmake it perhaps to the CEO's post.

Vieira points out that there are greater conflicts, greater competition as the tapering of the corporate pyramid is taking place. A Darwinian process of selection where only the fittest will survive. And sometimes not the most efficient but the most ruthless climb up the ladder making it all seem very unfair.

So, how should senior execs prepare themselves to survive in this quirky corporate world? Manager to CEO is the intelligent manager's guide to understanding and surviving in the real corporate environment. It gives a professional and comprehensive overview of the 21st century workplace, as well as discusses at length the wide range of issues that senior managers face in organizations.

The first chapter, Power Politics and Work, the author sets the pace of the book. The author points out that reaching to the top is all about understanding of the concept of power and politics in companies. It's definitely not just about what you can do or what you are efficiently do. So, how does one handle office politics. The author goes on to touch various issues like handling the boss, understanding the company culture, acquiring discretion & tact and most importantly understanding yourself.

Overall an insightful, practical book which is a must read for all execs. The author also touches upon various lighter issues as romance at the workplace, ethic and human values, cooperation and networking and most importantly what to do when you're down and out.

Director and COO of Graphiti Multimedia, Munjal Shroff tells Nidhi Jain about the kind of books that attract his attention.

My grandfather, Navin Shroff, used to read a lot of books. My school had an amazing library. Apart from that, our teachers made sure we read the right books, starting with Enid Blyton. I was a huge comic book fan, had a massive comic book collection. Due to space constraints, it's been given away to an orphanage. My family also nicknamed me Cartoon.

I love reading popular science.
Kind of book collection you have
Best sellers, science fiction and of late I have been reading management books to understand the method in the madness of the corporate world.

On favourite authors and well written books
Among authors I like Isabel Alende and Ashok Mehta's Ramayana. Also reading Afghan. I like to read a wide variety which are very genre specific like James Gleick's Chaos, I like to read books which explain things in different perspective like in Chaos. In the book it is stated how chaos is part of nature. In a way my reading is drawing those parallel in nature. Books I read co-relate to the work I do in life.

Do you find interesting things in every book? How do you choose books you read?
A recent example of Da Vinci Code. It was successful for merely because it broadened the content, the way the story was taken forward, the way the relevancy was brought in terms of taking clues of the places that exist, being pertinent about the location - the roofline, a particular cathedral, Da Vinci paintings. Fiction is all about creating an imaginary world. I like authors who draw so many relevant clues which exist, the perspective they bring. How gripping it is. It creates enough excitement for the reader to visualise them. As a filmmaker, a book should transport me visually to that place where I am able to feel the fear, that level of involvement comes with detailing. That's the mark of a writer.

Money and time you spend on books
You should confirm that with my wife Mona, especially since it's a competition between me, my wife and my books. Mostly while traveling, I catch up with my reading. I was a voracious reader now I don't even spend 10 % of my time reading.

Your reading pace
If the book is engrossing I can finish it in one night or it can take a month.

Browsing and e-reading
I e-browse a lot. My favourite site is wikipedia. I never managed to do e-reading since there is a limitation of screen space on a palmtop. Though I am a technology freak, I like the smell of the paper.

What do you think of self help books?
Some self help books are well written, some are repackaged like 7 habits, living the 7 habits. It's nice to pick up ideas, beyond a point it's your personality, self help books don't an make earth shattering difference in life.

Books that do not hold you
Self help books. Only a dumb person is going to pick up dummy series books.