Iacocca: An Autobiography

Lee Iacocca's autobiography is an appealing read if you belong to the automotive industry. The insiders view of the two of the big three automotive giants - Ford and Chrysler, is enough reason to pick up the book. 
The book has some amazing management nuggets on how to lead a productive ans a healthy work-life. The two golden nuggets I took away from the book was: 

1. In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.
2. Divide and track your own professional goals in quarters as your company does. 

From a superficial level, the book is neatly divided into two segment: 

1. Journey at Ford 
2. Embattle Journey at Chrysler 


But then the golden goose lies in the last segment of his book - "The Straight Talk". The article on the Japanese challenge is an engaging read which poses a comprehending argument on 'Fair vs Free Trade". 
What the book fails in delivering is the following: 

1. The family of the protagonist makes only a fleeting presence throughout the book. One of the Lee Iacoccoa's quote says" The only rock, the only institution that stays is your family". The book falls short on revealing the personal side of Lee Iacocca.

2. The portrayal Henry Ford's eccentric behavior has an amazing parallel to a Bollywood antagonist. The little scoops of Henry Ford II keeps the "masala" factor on. But the criticism on HF2 doesn't seem entirely fair. HF2 recruited a band of young guns who were dubbed as "Whiz Kids". Currently Ford is regarded as one of the best Financial Institutions and it is because of the practices laid by one of the Whiz Kids. This is just one of the instance. 

3. The books looks preachy at lengths for several times. The protagonist cannot do any wrong and is the Superman of the book. Maybe that's why an autobio is written. But Steve Jobs was very forthcoming about this negativities  in his book. 

All in all the book is a fair and a straight talk from Lee Iacocca - he said it as he saw it. There are plenty of anecdotes in the book, This one takes the cake - at the height of the Mustang frenzy, Lee was flying transatlantic to Europe when two pilots of jets flying nearby and a Captain from a Ship in "radio wave vicinity" patched in to talk to Lee when they figured out he was in the plane!  

2014- The Election that Changed India by Rajdeep Sardesai

Rajdeep, one of the most trustworthy and professional journalist in India (please don't judge him from the vicious twitter attacks!), book on the 2014 election is not really a discourse on the Election but rather an omnibus of the 6 month account and what preceded it.

Why the book is titled "The Election that Changed India" is not clear in the book. The Election results defined India's expectations and the simmering anger against Congress was put to forth. May be the title would have more apt few years from now when actual change (positive side, hopefully!) is visible on the ground.



Any concerned and informed citizen would be well aware of the storyline and the prime characters, but what makes this book an very engaging read is the personal anecdotes of the author with the various colourful political characters across parties peppered right across the book. The account on what preceded the "Self Destruct" interview of Rahul Gandhi's interview with Times Now; and the author's incident relative to the "Cash for Votes" are some of the best pieces in the book. The section on the use of IT in Modi's Campaign is where the book meanders a lot - probably the absence of politicans in this front and virtually no resistance from Congress in this field lead to a bit of a drag.

The author really tries to just put the facts (incidents in this case) on the table and leave the judgement to the imagination of the readers, but fails to do so on some accounts. The photo-op of Amit Shah releasing the book was an endorsement that the accounts described in the book are true.