Plugged In:
The Generation Y Guide to Thriving At Work
– Tamara Erickson
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(Harvard Business Press, Rs. 595)
These men and women, who were born after 1980, are now taking over the work environment with values, aspirations, and approaches that are markedly different from those that their parents had. They connect with people all the time — at the work place and outside of it — through Facebook, Twitter and other social networking methods. Well, they are Generation Y.
Tamara, with a little help from friends and students, and plenty of research, speaks her mind on different generations at the workplace and tries to understand the unique demographic and behavioural attributes of Gen Y in building a career path as well as family ties, finances and lifestyle.
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The writer helps Gen Y discover and use its abilities to connect with the changing work world and fully engage professionally with fellow workers. She reveals a framework for them when it comes to choosing careers, focussing on the unique assets and strengths the generation brings to the workplace.
Present At The Creation:
The Story Of CERN And The Large Hadron Collider - Amir D. Aczel
(Crown Publishers, Rs. 972)
This tome will most definitely attract lovers of science and those who are curious about the lives of knowledge providers of the world. Like Stefano Redaelli, the thirty-something particle physicist from Milan. Redaelli is perhaps one of the most powerful men and also the only person in history who, at the click of a mouse, could forever alter the fate of the world, and perhaps even the solar system. For, he is the brain behind the gargantuan particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is being powered to energy levels so immense they have never been seen before.
The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest and, by far, the most powerful machine ever built. A project of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, its purpose is to re-create in a 16.5-mile-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss countryside, the immensely hot and dense conditions that existed some 13.7 billion years ago within the first trillionth of a second after the fiery birth of our universe. The collider is now crashing protons at record energy levels never created by scientists before, and it will reach even higher levels by 2013. Within the LHC's detectors, scientists hope to see empirical confirmation of key theories in physics and cosmology. The author gives us a peep into the control rooms at CERN at key moments when an international team of researchers begins to discover whether this multi-billion-Euro investment will fulfil its promise.
The book gives us unprecedented access to the mechanism that explores the world that lies beyond what we see with the naked eye, and makes us see how small and insignificant we really are.
Science Without the Boring Bits:
Cranks, Curiosities, Crazy Experiments and Wild Speculation - Ian Crofton
(Quercus, Rs. 499)
‘Bored with Ohm's Law? Sick of statistics? Had it with Avogadro's number? Does entropy fill you with ennui, do globulins inspire nothing in you but gloom? Then you're in need of a dose of Science Without the Boring Bits!' That's how the inside flap of this book begins. Sure, enough, it arouses your curiosity.
This chronology comprises, as the title's tagline suggests, cranky theories, crackpot experiments, crazed professors, questionable quacks, mischievous pranksters, deluded pundits, and a priceless host of wild and baseless speculations.
Here are some colourful examples: did you know of the Soviet attempts to create an ape-human hybrid or Sir John Herschel's belief in the nutritional value of sawdust, or even better, Darwin's investigation of the musicality of earthworms!
These are just a few stories — from the sublime to the absolutely ridiculous — with the emphasis firmly on the latter. Result? You actually enjoy the subject (especially, if you are one of those who detests the S word).
BPO – Sutra:
True Stories from India's BPO & Call Centres
– Compiled and edited by Sudhindra Mokhasi
(Rupa, Rs. 150)
All the anecdotes are short and snappy. Some leave you with a smile, some leave you teary-eyed and a few make you sit up and think. Hey! Is this what people working at BPOs and call centres do? Are they really lucky to be part of the techie world or is it just an illusion?
Well, find out more about their lives as you scan through the 150 true stories meticulously worded by techie Sudhindra, himself a BPO entrepreneur.