Amartya Sen once had trouble getting a hotel operator to understand the spelling of his family name. So he spelled it out letter by letter in this form: "S for somebody; E for everybody; N for nobody," an interesting play with words relating to the self, personal identity and perception of oneself, which is the focus of this interesting and important book.
He has had a glittering academic career in the often dismal and sometimes arcane world of economics. He was a university professor in his native India at the tender age of 23 and has held university chairs at Delhi University, the London School of Economics, Oxford University (two posts), and Harvard where he now teaches. He was the first non-Briton to head Trinity College, Cambridge, his alma mater as well as the richest college at Oxford or Cambridge. He won the Nobel memorial prize for economics in 1998.
This book, hard on the heels of his "Argumentative Indian," marks Sen's arrival on the global scene as a powerful, eloquent voice for reason and tolerance amid turbulent times.