Page 43 - Silver Lakes February Issue 2023

BOOK REVIEWS

UNSTOPPABLE US – VOLUME 1 KOOS BEKKER’S BILLIONS

HOW HUMANS TOOK OVER THE WORLD By T.J. Strydom

By Yuval Noah Harari
With M-Net, Koos
From the author of the Bekker convinced
bestselling Sapiens comes an the business
incredible new story of the world he had
human race, for younger readers. the magic touch.
We humans aren’t strong But it was only
like lions, we don’t swim as well the start of an
as dolphins, and we definitely entrepreneurial
don’t have wings! So how did journey that
we end up ruling the world? would bring him
The answer to that is one of the immense wealth.
strangest tales you’ll ever hear. Bekker swept
And it’s a true story... in at Naspers,
Have you ever wondered transforming
how we got here? From hunting an Afrikaans
mammoths, to flying to the printer into a
moon? global technology giant, earning investors trillions
It is because we are unstoppable. But what made us so? Well, we have the and himself a good few billion. But how? What
most amazing superpower: the ability to tell stories. Fairy tales have led us were the methods employed by this boerseun from
from imagining ghosts and spirits to being able to create money (yes, really!). Heidelberg?
And this has made us very powerful... but very deadly. Nothing stands in our Financial journalist TJ Strydom distils it down to
way, and we always want more. 15 steps, each calculated and effective, sketching out
So, get ready for the most amazing story there ever was – the incredible the winning ways of the elusive media mogul. Bekker
true tale of the Unstoppables. Find out how fire shrank our stomachs, how often gets the credit for the investment in China’s
our ancestors spoke to animals, what football can tell us about being human, Tencent, a single punt that rivals South Africa’s
how we used our superpower for good and bad... and how YOU have the entire mining sector in the wealth it created this
superpower to change the world. century. But should he be the one lauded for this
With full-colour illustrations showing the relentless rise and rise of the achievement?
human race, this is history like you’ve never experienced it before.
Retail price: R280.00
Retail price: R330.00

ALL THE BROKEN PLACES apartment below her. In spite of herself,
Gretel can’t help but begin a friendship with
By John Boyne the little boy, Henry, though his presence
brings back memories she would rather
From the author of the globally bestselling, forget. One night, she witnesses a violent
multi-million-copy classic, The Boy in the Striped argument between Henry’s mother and
Pyjamas, and The Heart’s Invisible Furies. his domineering father, one that threatens
Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived Gretel’s hard-won, self-contained existence.
in the same mansion block in London for decades. Gretel is faced with a chance to expiate
She leads a comfortable, quiet life, despite her her guilt, grief and remorse and act to save
dark and disturbing past. She doesn’t talk about a young boy – for the second time in her life.
her escape from Germany over 70 years before. But to do so, she will be forced to reveal her
She doesn’t talk about the post-war years in true identity to the world. Will she make a
France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn’t different choice this time, whatever the cost
talk about her father, the commandant of one of to herself?
the most notorious Nazi concentration camps.
Then, a young family moves into the Retail price: R330.00

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