'When I’m dead, you make sure that ordinary people, ordinary rural women, must be at the forefront of my funeral. I want my rural women to be there at the forefront: people that know me well.’

With great care and meticulous research, Kally Forrest brings us the life of Lydia Komape, also known as Mam Lydia Kompe. Kally travels in Lydia’s footsteps, with family, friends, comrades and ancestors from Limpopo and Johannesburg to Cape Town where Lydia sat in Nelson Mandela’s parliament.

Her family’s shattering loss of land in the 1930s deeply impacted Lydia’s life choices. She was fiercely independent, yet bound by the collective, forceful but consultative, humorous and deeply serious.

Lydia closely identified with rural women, remarking, ‘We are so discriminated against, but we are made to work like donkeys. We do all the dirty work – you must go and plough, hoe, harvest, carry water, fetch wood, and men are just sitting drinking alcohol under the tree.’

This is a biography that will open your eyes and heart.

When he died in 2014, author Chris van Wyk left behind an impressive literary legacy. The scope of his work was broad – poetry, children’s books, short stories and biographies. But perhaps he is best remembered for his memoir Shirley, Goodness & Mercy, which chronicles his growing up in Riverlea and introduces us to the colourful characters who helped to shape his life and inform the stories he wrote.

The public persona of this witty and wise raconteur was well known, but behind it was a family man, who liked nothing better than to spend time with his two sons Kevin and Karl, his wife and childhood sweetheart Kathy, and the friends and family who were his primary sources of inspiration.

Using the unique vantage point of oldest son, Kevin van Wyk’s astute observations of his father and the strong bond they enjoyed throughout Chris’s life have resulted in a memoir that is as affectionate as it is entertaining. In taking us behind the scenes into the Van Wyk household, we witness the inner workings of the mind of a storyteller, from the flowering of his father’s activism, wit and wisdom to the sources of his occasional quirky outbursts. If storytelling runs in the genes, Kevin may just be proof that his father’s spirit lives on.

Portchie is een van Suid-Afrika se suksesvolste kunstenaars, maar wie is die man wat agter die skilderye skuil? Waar kom die naam Portchie vandaan? En hoe en wanneer het Jan Hendrik Viljoen van die klein dorpie Tweeling in die Vrystaat, aangemeld om die wêreldbekende kunstenaar Portchie te word? Hierdie memoir kombineer Portchie se inspirerende verhaal met foto’s, staaltjies en selfs resepte. Dit vertel die storie agter die storie: onopgesmuk, sonder tierlantjies, maar met ’n tikkie flair.

Hot Water is an intimate and daring look into the life of a young African woman from the Cape Flats with a chronic illness. The book investigates how endometriosis affects the way young woman function and navigate the world, and how this becomes especially complicated for those who are underprivileged and reliant on the public sector’s healthcare system.

In Hot Water Nadine Dirks reveals the unique issues of racism, sexism, classism, fatphobia and slut-shaming that African women experience within the context of healthcare facilities, and how especially jarring it is when the stigma comes from medical staff who one expects to have the patient’s care as their primary concern. All of this has enraged Dirks and catapulted her into becoming a sexual reproductive health and rights advocate.

Hot Water tells the story of how people with chronic illness are treated daily, at school, university and socially for being differently abled; how people are regarded as lazy, aggressive, disappointing, lacking, among multiple other things for being unwell in comparison to their healthy counterparts.

One cannot look at seeking adequate healthcare as a young, black, underprivileged woman on the Cape Flats without experiencing racism in the most blatant of ways. Even with guidelines in place, the book shows that it is next to impossible to invoke those rights even if you are aware of them for fear of being victimised and excluded from the system.

From the scene-stealing star of Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids comes a refreshingly candid, hilarious, and inspiring book about her unconventional journey to Hollywood success and loving herself.

This “beautiful, brave book,” (Jenna Bush Hager, the Today show) is the story of Rebel Wilson’s remarkable personal transformation, from a painfully shy child in Australia who literally had to be dragged to drama classes and achieved break-out success in the US through iconic roles in Pitch Perfect, Bridesmaids, and Isn’t It Romantic.

Through “stunningly personal revelations” (The New York Times), Rebel shares the extraordinary experiences that shaped her life. A malaria-induced hallucination? An all-style martial arts fighting tournament? Junior handling at dog shows? And this was all BEFORE she moved to Hollywood!

From her painful relationship with her father, weight gain and loss, a late-in-life sexual awakening and fertility issues, Rebel shares her incredible journey to self-love in writing that is “frank and fun.” (CBS Sunday Morning) Rebel leads you through her hard-fought path to “making it,” constantly questioning, “Am I good enough? Will I ever find love? Will I ever change and become healthy?”

This extraordinarily entertaining memoir shows us how to love ourselves while making us laugh uncontrollably.

In general, lives of noteworthy accomplishment are led by people with an obvious talent, or more than one. Occasionally, though, someone with no discernible gift whatsoever may distinguish him or herself with a remarkable life. Such cases invite the question of how? How did it happen? With age I have realised that mine is such a life, and, inevitably, I have asked that question. It may happen in cases like this that, as one searches for an answer, one looks for precedents: or even for gifts not inherent in oneself but from outside. I did neither: it came to me unbidden. As I sang, the lines in the hymn resonated so powerfully I could not get away from them: ‘As noiseless let Thy blessings fall as fell Thy manna down.’ That was it. Unobtrusively I had been blessed – again and again and again.

A dozy, unsocialised child follows a boringly ordinary course through life until gradually things start to work out for him in increasingly extraordinary ways. The only prize I ever won at school was the Natural History Prize, no academic accolades or colours for any sport. I was rewarded for loving undemanding nature; almost a non-prize. Nearly fifty years later, in a small town I had never visited before I was introduced to the author of a slim volume on the geography of the area. “Not THE Nick Norman,” she asked. I might have blushed. In 1987, aged 42 I had married, and gone on to father two children, one now a top lawyer, the other on a similar trajectory in medicine. Having dreamt of being a farmer, I owned a farm in Franschhoek, which put me in about the most envied group of people in South Africa. After a successful career in mineral exploration in Africa and South America I turned my hand to writing about geology in a way accessible to lay readers. Three best-sellers followed. The Red Sea opened up and the River Jordan stopped flowing, for the Israelites to reach their land of milk and honey. In between, though, there were 40 years in the wilderness.

This is my narrative. Yours will be different. Unpack it and you will find blessing after blessing. See how I found mine.

An inspirational and truly intersectional memoir from global humanitarian and social justice advocate Eddie Ndopu-a queer, Black wheelchair user and one of the UN Secretary-General's 17 Advocates for the SDGs.

A memoir, penned with one good finger, about being profoundly disabled and profoundly successful.

Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his mobility. He was told that he wouldn't live beyond age five and yet, Ndopu thrived. He grew up loving pop music and haute couture, lip syncing to the latest hits, and was the only wheelchair user at his school, where he flourished academically. By his late teens, he had become a sought-after speaker, travelling the world to give talks on disability justice. When he is later accepted on a full scholarship into Oxford University, he soon learns that it's not just the medical community he must defy - it's the educational one too.

In Sipping Dom Perignon Through a Straw, we follow Ndopu, sporting his oversized, bejewelled sunglasses, as he scales the mountain of success, only to find exclusion, discrimination, and neglect waiting for him on the other side. As he soars professionally, sipping champagne with world leaders, he continues to feel the loneliness and pressure of being the only one in the room. Determined to carve out his place in the world, he must challenge bias at the highest echelons of power and prestige.

Searing, vulnerable and inspiring, Ndopu's remarkable journey to reach beyond ableism, reminds us never to let anyone else define our limits.

When Rael Levitt stepped onto the podium at Quoin Rock Wine Estate in December 2011, he was CEO of the industry-pioneering Auction Alliance and at the pinnacle of a glittering 20-year career. But then disaster struck. After being accused by a powerful billionaire of using a ghost bidder to inflate the bid price, Levitt’s reputation was obliterated.

In an echo of the Boxing Day tsunami that he survived in 2004, the self-made entrepreneur was overwhelmed by a media-driven scandal that came at him like a train of killer waves. Once the face of South African auctions, he seemingly sank without a trace. But he was not beaten.

A decade later Levitt has a thrilling rise-and-fall-and-rise-again story to tell. The lessons he learnt from suffering catastrophe and finding the tenacity to survive have laid the foundations for new success. At once candid and controversial, Levitt’s story is ultimately an uplifting one, revealing that the greater the tsunami, the greater the lesson.

In 1978, the activist and novelist Alex La Guma (1925–1985) published A Soviet Journey, a memoir of his travels in the Soviet Union. Today it stands as one of the longest and most substantive first-hand accounts of the USSR by an African writer. La Guma’s book is consequently a rare and important document of the anti-apartheid struggle and the Cold War period, depicting the Soviet model from an African perspective and the specific meaning it held for those envisioning a future South Africa.

For many members of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, the Soviet Union represented a political system that had achieved political and economic justice through socialism – a point of view that has since been lost with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. This new edition of A Soviet Journey – the first since 1978 – restores this vision to the historical record, highlighting how activist-intellectuals like La Guma looked to the Soviet Union as a paradigm of self-determination, decolonisation and postcolonial development.

The introduction by Christopher J. Lee discusses these elements of La Guma’s text, in addition to situating La Guma more broadly within the intercontinental spaces of the Black Atlantic and an emergent Third World. Presenting a more expansive view of African literature and its global intellectual engagements, A Soviet Journey will be of interest to readers of African fiction and non-fiction, South African history, postcolonial Cold War studies and radical political thought.

Alex La Guma was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against the apartheid era in South Africa.

A moving journey of discovery into the unexplored continent that is often our families’ past. It can be read as a reconstruction of one’s own Jewish and at the same time European-South African roots, but through these micro-histories we arrive at the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust to the level of macro-history.

Egonne Roth’s work brilliantly illustrates the complex mechanism of intergenerational, communicative memory and cultural memory (described by Jan and Aleida Assmann, among others). On a feminist level, it is also a personal history of the daughter-father relationship, leading to a kind of purification, a catharsis.

The detective-like reconstruction of the multi-ethnic segments of the family’s history has as its backdrop the arduous completion of one’s own biography from scraps of documents, accounts of the now few witnesses, secrets, and traumas hidden for decades.

You may have read GG Alcock’s books about the kasi economy; now follow his journey to the dynamic world of KasiNomics and learn about the tribal forces that shaped him.

Born White Zulu Bred is the story of a white child and his brother raised in poverty in a Zulu community in rural South Africa during the apartheid era. His extraordinary parents, Creina and Neil Alcock, gave up lives of comfort and privilege to live and work among the destitute people of Msinga, whose material and social well-being became their mission. But more than that, this is a story about life in South Africa today which, through GG’s unique perspective, explores the huge diversity of the country’s people – from tribal Zulu warriors to sophisticated urban black township entrepreneurs. A journey from the arid wastes of Msinga into the thriving informal economies of urban townships.

GG’s view is that we do not live in a black and white world but in a world of contrast and diversity, one which he wants South Africans, and a world audience, to see for what it is without descending into racial and historical clichés. He takes us through the mazes of township marketplaces, shacks and crowded streets to reveal the proud and dignified world of township entrepreneurs who are transforming South Africa’s economy. This is the world that he moves in today as a successful businessman, still walking those spaces and celebrating the vibrant informal economies that are taking part in the KasiNomic Revolution.

GG’s story is about being truly African, even as a white person, and it draws on the adventures, the cultural challenges, the informal spaces and the future possibilities of South Africa.

In this never-before-seen memoir, Bergen-Belsen survivor Hannah Pick-Goslar shares incredibly powerful words on the final untold portrait of her childhood friend, Anne Frank. The inspiring and heartbreaking true story of two best friends torn apart and reunited against all odds.

When Hannah Pick-Goslar's family fled Nazi Germany for Amsterdam, she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbour; precocious, outspoken and fun-loving Anne Frank. Hannah instantly warmed to happy-go-lucky Anne and for seven blissful years, the inseparable pair navigated school, boys and coming of age in Amsterdam's Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood. But in 1942, life quickly changed for the thirteen-year-old girls.

The Nazi occupation of Amsterdam meant the friends were separated without warning. Hannah called on Anne, but there was no trace of her friend or her precious diary. Hannah was tormented over the fate of Anne, wondering if, by some stroke of fortune she had escaped danger and was alive and well elsewhere. It wasn't until Hannah reached her darkest point, imprisoned with her family in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, that she had an astonishing chance reunion with Anne. Desperate to save her friend who was weak and struggling to survive, Hannah risked everything to toss packages filled with food and clothes over a barbed-wire fence. Hannah only learned of Anne's death after her liberation, when Otto Frank came to visit her in hospital. From that day, Otto became a second father to Hannah, making sure that she was always looked after.

In this groundbreaking memoir, Hannah Pick-Goslar shares an intimate portrait of Anne Frank, the young Jewish diarist who has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world.

After Vanessa Goosen is imprisoned for smuggling drugs out of Thailand she gives birth to Felicia in Lard Yao Prison.

Felicia is sent back to South Africa when she turns three. Here she is lovingly raised by her mom's best friend. But Felicia feels desolated and she does not know how to voice her feelings. Years of rebellion and self harming follows.

In her student years Felicia's life turns around, and she becomes a wounded healer, reaching out to others bringing a message of hope.

Systemic racism and sexism caused one of South Africa’s most important writers to disappear from public consciousness. Is it possible to justly restore her historical presence?

Regina Gelana Twala, a Black South African woman who died in 1968 in Swaziland (now Eswatini), was an extraordinarily prolific writer of books, columns, articles, and letters. Yet today Twala’s name is largely unknown. Her literary achievements are forgotten. Her books are unpublished. Her letters languish in the dusty study of a deceased South African academic. Her articles are buried in discontinued publications. Joel Cabrita argues that Twala’s posthumous obscurity has not developed accidentally as she exposes the ways prejudices around race and gender blocked Black African women like Twala from establishing themselves as successful writers.

Drawing upon Twala’s family papers, interviews, newspapers, and archival records from Pretoria, Uppsala, and Los Angeles, Cabrita argues that an entire cast of characters—censorious editors, territorial White academics, apartheid officials, and male African politicians whose politics were at odds with her own—conspired to erase Twala’s legacy. Through her unique documentary output, Twala marked herself as a radical voice on issues of gender, race, and class. The literary gatekeepers of the racist and sexist society of twentieth-century southern Africa clamped down by literally writing her out of the region’s history.

Written Out also scrutinizes the troubled racial politics of African history as a discipline that has been historically dominated by White academics, a situation that many people within the field are now examining critically. Inspired by this recent movement, Cabrita interrogates what it means for her —a White historian based in the Northern Hemisphere—to tell the story of a Black African woman. Far from a laudable “recovery” of an important lost figure, Cabrita acknowledges that her biography inevitably reproduces old dynamics of White scholarly privilege and dominance. Cabrita’s narration of Twala’s career resurrects it but also reminds us that Twala, tragically, is still not the author of her own life story.

A captivating and insightful account of Dr Max Price’s journey at the helm of a major South African university during a period of immense upheaval.

As Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town for two terms from 2008 to 2018, he offers a candid look at the challenges he faced during his time including transformation, rights of artistic expression, institutional culture, clemencies and amnesties, restorative justice and ethical decision, and of course, #FeesMustFall protests – which shook the country's higher education sector to its core.

Drawing on his experiences, Price delves into the complexities of multi-stakeholder decision-making, crisis management, and the importance of values such as academic freedom in an increasingly polarised world. Part memoir, part insider's view of history, and part leadership guide, Statues and Storms is a must-read for anyone interested in higher education, South African history, or the art of leadership during times of crisis.

Gender based violence is widely prevalent in South African society, but male rape is often a neglected area. According to The Conversation, in an article by Prof Louise Du Toit, men make up around 10% of victims of sexual violence.

The group South African Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse says one in six adult males in the country have been victims of sexual offences in their lifetimes and, in 2012, almost 20% of all sexual abuse victims were male. But men are up to 10 times less likely than women to report sexual violence against them. Frequently men who report sexual assault are accused of being gay. In addition, according to Prof Du Toit, “Some feminist activists are reluctant to focus on the male victims because they think it will undermine long-fought-for attention for female victims.”

Silent Scream is a refreshing acknowledgement of this disturbing picture, told firsthand by a survivor of multiple instances of sexual violence, including gang rape and other forms of physical and sexual violence.

The author is a man in his fifties, intelligent and multifaceted, who carried the weight of the ages on his tattooed shoulders. Following a childhood marred by distant parents, he was assaulted in his late teens.

This is a book filled with hurt, with anger, with events that should never occur, but that the author has been able to rise above. It’s also a book about recovery, redemption, and the power of healing. No punches are pulled. It’s a very necessary book for our country and our time.

Leon and his twin Norman were born in August 1929, the youngest of four children born to Mary and Mark Levy, immigrants from Lithuania. His father died when Leon was six; to heroic degree, his mother carried the family – financially, practically and emotionally – in her widowhood. Leon was an intensely bookish boy but left school aged sixteen to help makes ends meet through a series of jobs. Deeply affected by the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust, Leon was radicalised in the Hashomer Hatza’ir, a left-wing Zionist youth movement. He was seventeen when he joined the Communist Party and became a committed young activist.

In 1953, at the age of twenty-four, Leon became a full-time trade unionist. ‘It was a defining moment in my life story,’ he writes. ‘It gave practical form to my political beliefs; it also determined the shape and scope of my life. It transpired that I would spend the next six decades and more working in trade unions, industrial relations and mediation.’

A comrade in the trade union movement nicknamed Leon, TsabaTsaba – which means “here, there and everywhere”. Anyone who reads Leon’s account of his years as a full-time unionist will agree that the soubriquet was well earned. (Alongside trade union work, Leon was also committed to the remarkable Discussion Club, which he co-founded and ran throughout the 1950s; he was also secretary of the South African Peace Council from 1951 to 1961.) In the mid-1950s, he was part of a small group of progressive trade unionists who pushed for the formation of the first non-racial trade union federation in South Africa. These aspirations were realised in March 1955 with the launch of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). Later that year Leon was elected president and remained in that position for nine years. SACTU linked day-to-day concerns of workers with support for national liberation and the abolition of apartheid and was one of the five organisations which formed the Congress Alliance. As SACTU leader, Leon served on the committee that directed the activities of the Alliance; he was present at Kliptown when the Freedom Charter was adopted – and as SACTU president was one of the five original signatories of the Freedom Charter.

Political activism of this order came at a high price. Leon Levy was served with banning orders and arrested several times; he was Accused No 4 of the 156 people arrested and charged with treason, and from November 1958 was one of the final 30 (and with Helen Joseph one of only two whites) who faced charges until the trial was finally dismissed in March 1961. He was detained for five months during the 1960 State of Emergency. In May 1963 he was the first person to be detained under the notorious General Laws Amendment Act, known as the 90-day Act. Unable to continue his work he chose to go into exile in the United Kingdom. There, he studied politics, economics and industrial relations at Oxford – and then applied what he had learned in a series of positions in industrial relations. After 1994, he was determined to make the skills and knowledge that he had acquired available to a democratic South Africa – and he and his wife Lorna returned to the country of their birth in 1997. In a remarkable final phase of his career, Leon took office shortly after his 70th birthday as a full-time commissioner for the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration – and spent the next 19 years in this capacity.

Khulu Radebe had had a full life. Then, at the age of 50, he discovered that he was a king.

As a teenager, Khulu Radebe was part of the Alexandra Township 1976 uprisings. Arrested and sent to Robben Island, he was one of the youngest prisoners there. Returning to Alex, he participated in the township’s 1986 Six Days War. Radebe joined the armed struggle, repeatedly dodging death from the enemy and from fellow MK soldiers in Angola.

At age 50, and proving a prophet’s prediction correct, Khulu Radebe learned about his royal roots. He was informed that he was the ruler of the AmaHlubi people of the Embo Nation, a nation that stretches along the east coast of Africa.

In chronicling his extraordinary life and times in this landmark autobiography, Radebe, in a humane and vivid way, chronicles too the revolutionary path for freedom in South Africa. Alexandra Township in Johannesburg is a central character in this book and Radebe reveals an astonishing story of the post-1990 war between Inkatha and the ANC in Alex.

Gripping, bold and original, Comrade King, is an unforgettable story.

“I saw my mommy walking to the court with a hoodie on and a scarf covering her face. She looked almost like someone that was poor. People were cursing at her… and that broke me. This is the woman who was there for me every day, making lunch for me and my friends when we came from school, and now here she is on television being called a criminal.”

The kidnapping of baby Zephany Nurse from the cot beside her mother’s hospital bed made headline news. Desperate pleas from her parents to return her safely went unanswered. There was no trace of the baby. For 17 years, on her birthday, the Nurse family lit candles and hoped and prayed.

Living not far away from the Nurses, 17-year-old Miché Solomon had just started Matric. She had a boyfriend. She had devoted parents. She was thinking about the upcoming school dance and the dress her mother was going to make for her. She had no idea that a new girl at her school, who bore an uncanny resemblance to her, and a DNA test would shake her world to its foundations.

Miché is now 22. This is her story – for the first time in her own words. Told with astonishing maturity, honesty and compassion, it is also a story of what it means to love and be loved, and of claiming your identity.

The stories of Naz Gool Ebrahim and District Six are intimately linked; in fact it is hard to imagine the one without the other.

As the niece of Cissie Gool, Naz came from fighting stock. Strong women with strong voices ran in the family. So when the Apartheid Government declared 'the District', a slum in 1966 and announced plans to flatten it, Naz wasn’t about to lose all that she held dear without a fight. She became the voice of the voiceless, both in South Africa and in the USA and was nominated as ‘Woman of the Year’. Naz combined her radical political activism with her roles as devoted wife and mother to six children. Up until the end of her life in 2005, she worked tirelessly to oppose the evil of racial segregation.

To her opponents, she was an indomitable adversary, but to her friends she was ‘Naz – Raz-a-ma-tazz’, a great lady who certainly knew how to tell a story and put on a good show.

Toe die eerste bomme op Februarie 2022 Kijif aan flarde skiet, was Kobus Olivier gereed. Maar om te vlug was bloot nie ’n opsie nie – wat sou van sy vier geliefde honde word?

In Met my honde word Kobus en sy vier brakke se verhaal vertel.

Die angswekkende nagte terwyl bomme om hul neerreën, die verhaal van onvoorwaardelike liefde tussen mens en dier, en hoe jy selfs tydens ’n oorlog op die hulp van vreemdelinge kan staatmaak.

Gwen Lister is a world-renowned journalist, political activist and free-press advocate. Born in South Africa, she moved to Namibia to pursue her journalism career. She launched (with Hannes Smith) the Windhoek Observer and later, The Namibian.

This memoir chronicles her remarkable life, brave journalism and political activism. 

Die verstommende storie van ’n sakelegende wat een van Afrika se welvarendste maatskappye uit niks opgebou het.

Anton Rupert was 'n Karooseun wat in die Depressie grootgeword het, en dit skaars kon bekostig om te gaan studeer, maar sy Rembrandt groep word uiteindelik ʼn wêreldleier in o.m. luukse goedere. Wat was Rupert se geheim? Rupert se oorspronklike sienings oor die skepping van werk en welvaart in ‘n sukkelende ekonomie is sy blywende nalatenskap met diepgaande lesse vir Suid-Afrika vandag. Sy storie is meer relevant as ooit.

Hier vertel die gesoute sakeskrywer Ebbe Dommisse die volle verhaal, vol kleur en anakdotes, in dié opgedateerde uitgawe van sy hoogaangeskrewe biografie van Rupert.

Lew Geffen is destined to have an eventful life. Driven by a maverick spirit, he embarks on a wild ride of success, securing the local Sotheby’s International Realty license to become a major player in the property market.

Along the way he's fired by his mother, sells Mandela's house and navigates the fallout of a murder at his company's annual convention. Lew's extraordinary life is told with candour, warmth and laced by his wicked sense of humour.

Geffinitely a business memoir like no other.

As Samsung Africa’s former President and CEO, Sung Yoon was a first-hand witness to the company’s journey to becoming a global brand. Despite challenges, he turned Samsung’s Africa business into a success over four years.

In a career spanning more decades, he contributed in numerous capacities, heading up sales not only in Africa but in three different overseas assignments.

Yoon offers insights that shed light on the challenges of making business decisions and taking calculated risks.