I have way too many books read but not reviewed, so this is the only way in which I can reduce the pile. Mass burial 
The Fund, Rob Copeland, 2023 – I had heard of the mismanagement and scandals at Dalio’s Bridgewater in some long-form posts I came across last year. This book is the 10x version of the same. Dalio needs no introduction – we know him from “How the economic machine works” video (honestly, thats the first time I came across him) and for books like “Big debt crises” and of course, his “Principles” which looks not so subtly, like the Bible, in black with a red bookmarking ribbon. I enjoyed “Big debt crises” and hated “Principles” which I flung across the room once out of sheer confusion (Never completed it, thats why there’s no review here). Turns out all these were marketing efforts by Dalio to become respected like Buffett, who he was obsessed with.
The gist of the book is that Dalio had a Steve Jobs obsession (stopped just short of wearing turtleneck like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos) to the extent that he wanted Walter Isaacson to do his biography like he did Jobs’. Dalio was originally Dalalio (renamed himself to Dalio) and was from a poor family and married into serious wealth but his Bridgewater did do wonderfully well for his clients until 2005 or so but has underperformed since. Most of the underperformance perhaps stems from Dalio’s obsession with transparency and God complex, of having people adhere to his “principles” – to the extent that he wanted to build a AI modelled with his principles (with Scarlett Johansson’s voice) that would replace him.
Employees at Bridgewater were rated on a baseball card format (dot collector) and this was open for everyone’s view. Dalio encouraged, or rather enforced negative views out in the open, almost to a fault. Every activity at the company was taped (not before being edited) – The transparency library at Bridgewater had videos of mundane trials with Dalio as judge, jury and executioner (he seems to have relished aggressively putting people down) for things as mild as stains on the carpet or doughnuts at the cafeteria. What was surprising for me was the little to nothing on financial markets in a book about a hedge fund – apparently this is par for the course at Dalio’s Bridgewater. Most people employed there had nothing to do with financial markets in the first place which was the strangest thing for me. 7/10
The Language of Food, Dan Jurafsky, 2015 – The book combines history with linguistic analysis to trace the roots of foods we commonly know, like ketchup, mint julep, toast, macaroons, turkey, ice creams, fortune cookies and so on. Some of them are very interesting like how ketchup which was originally based out of fish sauce 500+ years ago in China traveled to Europe, lost the fish and was replaced with tomatoes and the traveled to the states and acquired sugar, or how fish and chips originally originated in Persia as Sikbaj or how macaroons too originated in Persia (lot of European food seems to have originated in Persia).
The book started off really promising with the hilarious “how to read a menu” chapter which dissects the linguistic choices made in menus in expensive vs cheap restaurants for the same foods. The expensive ones add random french words, pay lot of attention to the origin of ingredients, signalling high status and how longer the words used to describe the food, higher the $$$ charged. The book traces the reason why Entree in US means main while in Europe, it might mean appetiser and the origin of the multi-course meal.
I especially liked the creativity that went into figuring out that front-vowels in many languages refer to small, light things while back vowels refer to big, fat, heavy things (back vowels are consequently used more in flavours of ice creams while front vowels are used in crackers). The reason is the way our senses react to each other (synesthesia) – how sound affects taste and so on. Overall the book was an entertaining, light read that would open up your mind to look for the origin and history of the foods that you eat. 8/10
Odyssey of Courage, Habil Khorakhiwala, 2017 – Its an autobiography so what’s in the book needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. The book covers his early life, the early days of Wockhardt (Wockhardt is short for Worli Chemicals – but with a MNC sounding twist) but what’s covered in great depth is the research part of business which is why I found this book informative – right from the reason for entering antibiotics (because other serious players were leaving) and hiring of its first employee in Mahesh Patel and others players in the space like global MNCs Pfizer, Glaxo, Merck. There’s a great primer on some of the blockbuster antibiotics (levofloxacin, tazobactam, caftaroline, clarithromycin, cefepime etc.) and their history and performance.
He understood early on the financial ability required to fund research and the timelines but was willing to play the long game. As players left the space to pursue chronic ailments with predictable cash-flows, the number of antibiotic approvals also flagged. There’s a great primer on zidebactam as well alongside some of the other molecules Wockahardt has been working on. It doesn’t shy away from the most critical time in its history – which was the financial crisis it faced with the currency swaps and forward contracts that almost took the entire company down in 2008 that led them to sell 10/17 hospitals, animal healthcare business, nutrition business to Danone. He however brushes over the FDA issues though he mentions sales dropping from $500m in US in 2013 to $150m in 2017 post regulatory issues. There’s not an iota of acknowledgement of the FDA issues uncovered. Even the financial issues from 2008 are partially blamed on the then CFO.
It covers extensively his family, mainly his children and the roles they play in the company and how they were groomed for it. A lot of this stuff might be not be so useful for most people. What I see if I try to be balanced is a person who is an extreme risk taker and invariably every decade something has blown up which has destroyed value. But I have to give it to the man for backing his instinct and going all out on the research which no one else was willing to do. If it does pay off, he will be hailed as a visionary in retrospect as history books pay a lot of respect to the outcome and he might just be able to pull that off. 7/10
Disc: I am invested in Wockhardt since Nov ‘23 and might be biased
Bottle of Lies, Katherine Eban, 2019 – Covers the dark side of Indian pharma in terms of its poor compliance record. The book’s main focus is Ranbaxy but you also see other Indian businesses like Wockhardt, Vimta, Dr. Reddy’s Labs, RPG, Glenmark etc mentioned. The only Indian company the book has anything nice to say about is Cipla and has a glowing respect for its founder Yusuf Hamied. The crux of the book is based on Ranbaxy whistleblower Dinesh Thakur (has his own book “The Truth Pill” about drug regulation in India) and also interviews with FDA officials and others.
While there are some companies which are named, it is safe to assume the practice was more widespread as the market on which everyone was competing on is same and compliance cost is huge (imagine discarding 30% of your product because of quality issues and how it will impact margins). There were FDA inspectors like Murali Gavini (Mike Gavini mentioned in the book) who preferred to audit Hyderabad based pharma companies and were known to be extremely lenient (lot of examples mentioned in the book). So a clean track record around this time should also be taken with a pinch of salt.
This was one of the first books on the pharma sector I read so learned quite a bit of the basics as well like what is a para IV certification, FTF and 6 month exclusivity, patent challenges and how prior to Hatch-Waxman, even generic companies had to do extensive trials for generics and how ANDA changed all that, what a Form 483 is and what NAI (No action indicated – best outcome), VAI (some defeciences to be corrected) and OAI (the most serious with major violation uncovered) meant and how the FDA came about etc. You will also gain a very clear idea of what transpired at Ranbaxy and how devious were the Singh brothers – the issue here with Ranbaxy is not just restricted to compliance but to outright financial fraud as well with the way their misled Daiichi Sankyo.
I am however, a little divided on books like these (same like a book like Putin’s people) because there are certain nuances we need to be aware of. There is definite truth to the allegations and they have in fact been proven and are also very believable – we simply don’t have high focus on quality and have seen it across industries (in IT, bugs are fixed without serious consequence). What we must look at though is the motivation behind a book like this – the runaway profits post Hatch-Waxman act (that allowed generics) of Indian and Chinese businesses irked the innovators. The regulator (FDA) was understaffed and didn’t have funds to oversee the global supply chains. Capitalism insists on lower costs and when there’s no oversight, it is inevitable that the costs impact quality – we have seen this time and again across industries as well. The FDA came out all guns blazing post 2010 just as the brazen data manipulation (for FDA if process is compromised, so is the product), poor quality control, blatant disregard to good manufacturing practices were at their peak and the result is there for all the see. To blame it all on Indian pharma (China RX talks about how similar audits were not even possible in China) is what I have a slight problem with while ignoring the ecosystem that enabled and ignored all this. 9/10
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