by Lord Omlette.
Created 2004-09-08 281 BMT.
Updated 2006-01-10 248 BMT.
Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam by APJ Abdul Kalam & Arun Tiwari.
Note: This book is about being Indian. It doesn't make alot of sense to read this book if you're not an Indian (either from birth or heritage).
That said, the only word possible to describe the book is "inspirational". What other word could possibly describe a dirt-poor Muslim growing up to become president of a country filled w/ 800 million Hindus? Supported by both major political parties, the man is considered the quintessential Indian.
Abdul Kalam wasn't a member of any of the disparate groups who combined forces to push back the British occupiers... occupiers that had deliberately slaughtered millions of Indians over hundreds of years. If he had an opinion of the brutal partition that tore India in half, he didn't mentioned it in the book. No one asked him for an explanation of India's humiliating defeat at the hands of China in 1962. It's almost as if he missed all of the major mind-blowing events of his time. So why exactly is he so important?
When Abdul Kalam was growing up, he was just a young man eager to learn as much as possible about science. Successive mentors convinced him that there was a great goal to be achieved in making India self-sufficient in multiple areas. Eventually he came to greatness by overseeing the development of satellite launch vehicles, a feat duplicated by only a handful of other countries. Those SLVs served as the basis for a variety of state-of-the-art military missiles. (caveat: I'm not an expert on whether they're actually state of the art, but India is certainly holding her own...)
From an American viewpoint, where everyone is screaming bloody murder about weapons proliferation, Abdul Kalam's recollections of France's withdrawl of support and false accusations of German help serve as a disturbing reminder that embargoing a country simply cannot work if the country's populace is determined to control their own destiny. It's disturbing that there is little discussion on the ethics of an impoverished nation developing nuclear weapons and deploying delivery systems... but that's almost completely lost in the discussion of self-reliance and a determination to never again submit to foreign rule.
"You gotta believe!" may be an ok motto coming from Parappa the Rappa, but it sounds corny coming from just about anyone else... but not from Abdul Kalam. The man is boundless optimism, and it's infectious. Any gathering of Indian adults in America will inevitably produce the whining that their kids are too Americanized and they don't respect India and blahblahblah. My opinion on this is that kids who grow up outside of India don't appreciate India's potential. This book is the solution. I challenge any skeptic of India's greatness to try to read this book without having your views fundamentally altered.
"Review of Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam" is Copyright © 2006 Lord Omlette. If you know otherwise, hollar.
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-added 2003-07-03