Leap of Faith - Book by Queen Noor

Recently I have been reading this book titled " Leap of Faith" by Queen Noor of Jordan, the widow of King Hussein. It was quite literally eye-opening to read this book about the Middle east and the life of King Hussein and Queen Noor. Surprisingly, Indian's rarely have the chance to learn about the arab history in their schools even though in recent years middle-east Asia has become quite important from a political and economic stand point. Anyways, more about the book.

Though I am not knowledgable in writing styles, the book has a nice flow and feels more like a converstation than a history book sorted by date. The book tells about events in the middle east in the last 5-6 decades from the viewpoint of Arabs. The principles shown by King Hussein during his dealings with all political leaders are inspiring. The book is a great read and I feel people from developing nations will be easily able to connect with the ideas express by Queen Noor and the work done by her in developing Jordan.

An average educated middle class Indian normally sees politics and politicians as being dirty without any morals or principles and not many are willing to enter this feild which has led to a dearth of young leadership for India. As Abe Lincoln wrote in a letter to the headmaster of his son's school, "Teach him that for every bad politician there is a genuine leader", King Hussein would be a role model for people willing to enter politics and willing to lead the country to developement and prosperity.

We are never even taught political science in school. Instead as an engineer I had to take courses in Psycology, Philosophy and Economics. Not that there is anything wrong with learning these but I feel, to get a better world view it is essential to know political science too.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about middle-east and a little bit about world politics.

Why not make every college IIT and have the common nationwide exam ?

Regarding the article in Times on reducing the syllabus of JEE as it causes students to commit suicide.
I just had some questions for the committee members :
1. Will you let any Tom, Dick and Harry, who doesnt have the guts to look beyond his 12th class books, join the IITs ?
2. Will they reduce the level of difficulty of questions along with the topics ? If not, how does removing topics shut down the coaching classes ? Their main source of income is by teaching students to solve problems which normal colleges don't teach.
3. Why not do that to the IAS entrance, the IIM entrace as well while we are on the go ?

I did not expect this statement from an IIT director, in the article he quotes what the HRD committe feels, does he agree with them ??

And then they say, IIT's cause brain drain.