Book Reviews

Finally Reed Hastings, Netflix Chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries. With INSEAD business school professor Erin Meyer, he will explore his leadership philosophy - which begins by rejecting the accepted beliefs under which most companies operate - and how it plays out in practice at Netflix.

Black and White Thinking is an alarm call, an urgent and timely explanation of the polarisation seen in some of the most dominant global news stories of modern times. It is human instinct to sort and categorise. We are hardwired to discriminate and frame everything in binary black and white. It's how our brains work. Migrant or refugee? Muslim or Christian? Them or us?

The presidential memoirs of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, will be published in two volumes. The first volume, titled A Promised Land, is scheduled for global release on Tuesday, 17 November 2020, and will be issued simultaneously in 25 languages.

Originally, the Venda Building Society, VBS Mutual Bank was a small, little-known lender in Limpopo before it rocketed from obscurity in 2016 by giving President Jacob Zuma a controversial home loan to repay the state for improvements to his Nkandla homestead.

Today the focus on ‘a job’ is more pronounced than it has ever been before in our global commercial history. We are living on a planet that is rapidly becoming less and less sustainable and which needs to progressively take better care of its people, and vice versa.

Closing the Gap is an accessible overview of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the impact it is set to have on various sectors in South Africa and Africa. The book explores the previous industrial revolutions that have led up to this point and outlines South Africa’s position been through each one.

What happens to an organisation when good governance and warning signs are ignored? The author had a ringside-seat at one of the worst financial catastrophes South Africa has seen and his new book Enabler or victim? KPMG SA and State Capture describes his experience as Chairman of KPMG during the turbulent period the firm experienced.

This collection offers a new theory of the public sphere. The notion that societies mediate issues through certain kinds of engagement is at the heart of the democratic project and often centres on an imagined public sphere where this takes place.

The dominant news media is often accused of reflecting an ‘elite bias’, privileging and foregrounding the interests of a small segment of society, while ignoring the narratives of the majority. Tell Our Story investigates the problem of disproportionate media representation and offers a hands-on demonstration of listening journalism and research in practice to promote a more active engagement between journalists and local communities.

This timely book analyses the crisis and chaos of journalism in contemporary South Africa at a period when the media and their role are frequently at the centre of public debate. The transition to digital news has been messy, random and unpredictable.