If you are a thinker, you will love the spirit of inquiry behind "The Sceptical Patriot". If you are also willing to suspend the mainstream notions of media led logic, this book will come to you as a beautiful breath of fresh air.
To begin with I picked this one up thinking it will be another standard Sidin book of humor. The first three books by Sidin’s form a trilogy in the “Dork Series”. In those books he gives us a peek into the wonderfully funny and incredibly humorous world of a budding consultant.
"Sceptical Patriot" couldn’t have been more different than my expectation and from the earlier three.
This book is a brilliantly researched and powerfully constructed book, which questions the truth behind “Zero and other Indian glories”. Sidin picks up 7 famous Indian glories ranging from “inventor of zero”, to “the oldest university in the world” and then goes about questioning each with an sceptics mind.
He does this in a manner which is deeply engaging and quite entertaining. This is where the beauty of the book is, taking serious issues of historical relevance for India and then having an engaging yet objective analysis.
In today’s mass media led hysteria and increasingly intolerant debates on most issues, I wish there were more books like this. I salute Sidin for having the courage to step out of his comfort zone of humor and also take us all out of our comfort zone of accepting legends without question.
The only reason the book misses a perfect 5 is because I wish there was more research and more detail and it could cover more topics. While stating this limitation, I also understand the risk of taking it too far, which would make the book lose its readability.
Rating : 4.5 / 5
No comments:
Post a Comment