Book smart
Hylton Kallner, CEO of Discovery SA, shares his summer reading list...
"I like reading about behaviour change, how people thrive in adversity and change the world"
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
Written with Stanley's signature wry humour, Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life. The book is filled with anecdotes about him growing up; shooting foodie films; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for children. It takes you on a journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes - each as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
The Coming Wave:Technology, Power,and the Twentyfirst Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman
This Financial Times Best Book of the Year explains that we're approaching a critical threshold of change. AI will organize our lives and operate businesses and core government services. But are we prepared? As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman shows how it will create immense prosperity but also potentially threaten the foundation of order. This book establishes the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies - it's a uniquely complex ethical dilemma, which will define our time.
Magic Words by Jonah Berger
Get an inside look at the new science of language and how to use it. Advances in machine learning, linguistics, and natural language processing, combined with the digitisation of everything we write and say, have yielded unprecedented insights. This book is a powerful toolkit of techniques to persuade a client, motivate a team, or get an organisation to see things differently by using the power of magic words.
Rassie: Stories of Life and Rugby by Rassie Erasmus
Rassie talks about his adventures and misadventures as he looks back on his exceptional career, in which his innate rugby instincts, ability to read a game, and appetite for hard work set him apart. He discusses his coaching methods, how he fought the rugby establishment and his greatest contribution to South African rugby, appointing its first black captain, Siya Kolisi.
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant
Serena Williams says: "This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would've helped me find a more joyful path to progress." You can't get a much better endorsement, and this book lives up to it by providing insights, and vivid storytelling to show that progress depends less on how hard you work and more on how well you learn.
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
A habit expert from Stanford University, BJ Fogg shares his method for building habits quickly and easily. Based on 20 years of research and coaching more than 40 000 people, Tiny Habits shares the simplest, proven ways to transform your life. The author shows you how to feel good about your successes instead of negative about your failures, and how to make habits stick through positive emotion.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson is one of the great biographers of our time and tells the story of one of the most controversial innovators of our era, Elon Musk. The author shadowed Musk for two years interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries. The result is a revealing story of triumphs and turmoil, and how Musk has led the world into the era of electric vehicles and private space exploration, among other innovations.
The Four Workarounds: Strategies from the World's Scrappiest Organizations for Tackling Complex Problems by Paulo Savaget
Award-winning researcher Paulo Savaget shows how the most valuable lessons about problemsolving can be learned from small organisations dedicated to social action. He has identified the four workarounds: the piggyback, the loophole, the roundabout, and the next best, and demonstrates how each one works and which to use when. This book shows how both business and life challenges can be addressed using unconventional tactics. This is brain food for entrepreneurs.
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr Peter Attia
Dr Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimising exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health. This book helps you learn how to think about long-term health. It shares interesting facts, including why exercise is the most potent prolongevity intervention, why we need to focus on nutritional biochemistry to personalise our eating patterns, and that ignoring emotional health could be the ultimate enemy of longevity.