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Books > Promotion > Father's Day > Biography
After forty years of entertaining and mesmerizing audiences with his effervescent dancing and bubbly stage personality, veteran performer and producer Alistair Izobell was the consummate professional and showman. A household name from his performances as a nine-year-old boy in District Six the musical, to his cover version hit in 1993 - Venus. With theatre performances in Kat and the Kings, The Buddy Holly Story, The Doo Wha Boys, co-writing Remembering the Lux and more, life was amazing for this creative. Producing show after show, leaving audiences with lifelong memories. Introducing new talent to the industry, nurturing existing talent, writing theme songs for soap operas and a song for an international Grammy award winning group. The sky was the limit. But it was all smoke and mirrors. There was darkness behind the spotlight. Alistair never knew he was suffering from depression and the walls were closing in. The patriarchal system that we as a society have become accustomed to had come to bear with a bit of karma, after a massive betrayal in his life, and the cards came crashing down. On the 13th September 2023 Alistair Izobell tried to take his life. It was all too much for him to carry on. Having survived suicide, he now had to face every good, bad and ugly reality, every decision, the trauma, and results of a life handed over to show business at a young age. The road to recovery and healing has and will be a long one. But when you want to heal and find your smile and freedom, nothing can stop you. Broken to Heal is born from the sessions of therapy and wanting to be better. A book of anecdotes inviting the reader into the life and world of this performer we forgot was a normal child, husband, father, and friend. This book is aimed to let those who enjoy the work of performers think a little deeper about the enormous naked emotional journey creatives go through for them to enjoy the beauty of their art. But to remember that there is a real human being behind the curtains with the same life challenges we all carry. It is also a hand of hope to someone out there suffering from depression, to remind them that all is not lost, and there is help and kindness that you have access to. There is medical help that you have at your disposal and that you are never alone in your darkness. Someone is waiting for you to say I need help. And more than anything, YOU BELONG HERE!
From the editor in chief of Variety and author of the New York Times bestseller "Ladies Who Punch", the never-fully-told, behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump and The Apprentice, the long-running reality series that catapulted him to the White House. Here for the first time is the definitive untold story of Donald Trump’s years as a reality TV star. Trump himself admits he might not have been president without The Apprentice. Now, just as he uncovered the chaos inside the daytime favorite The View in his bestselling "Ladies Who Punch", Ramin Setoodeh chronicles Trump’s dramatic tenure as New York’s ultimate boss in the boardroom, a mirage created by Survivor producer Mark Burnett and NBC boss Jeff Zucker. With unprecedented access, including hours of interviews with Trump, his boardroom advisers George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher, Eric Trump, and some of the most memorable contestants, and writing with flair and authority, Setoodeh shares all the untold tales from this legendary show that has left its mark on popular culture, shaped the legend of its star, and ultimately changed American history.
The long-awaited memoir from iconic, beloved actor and living legend Sir Patrick Stewart. From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations in a career spanning six decades with his indelible command of stage and screen. No other British working actor enjoys such career variety, universal respect and unending popularity, as witnessed through his seminal roles – whether as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame, Professor Charles Xavier of Marvel's X-Men hit film franchise, his more than forty years as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company and in such critically lauded roles for Hamlet and The Tempest on the West End and Broadway, his unforgettable one-man show adapted from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, or his comedic work in American Dad!, Ted, Extras and Blunt Talk, among many others. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So, a revealing portrait of a driven artist whose astonishing life – from his humble and hardscrabble beginnings in Yorkshire, to the dizzying heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim – proves a story as exuberant, definitive and enduring as the author himself.
Everyone is programmed a little differently, and Bill Gates' unique
insight led to business triumphs that are now widely known: the
twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company
that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and
lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to
philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and
U.S. education.
An outrageous, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an
intoxicating world - from someone who survived the trading game and
then blew it all wide open
Benni had everything that a coach loves in a player.’ – José Mourinho
“the bird is freed”
In early 1985, Michael J. Fox was one of the biggest stars on
television. His world was about to get even bigger, but only if he
could survive the kind of double duty unheard of in Hollywood. Fox's
days were already dedicated to rehearsing and taping the hit sitcom
Family Ties, but then the chance of a lifetime came his way. Soon, he
committed his nights to a new time-travel adventure film being directed
by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg, Back to the
Future. Sitcom during the day, movie at night - day after day, for
months.
From the golden beaches of Durban to the thunderous waves of Hawaii’s North Shore, Godfather of the Waves charts the extraordinary life of Mike Larmont – the man who shaped South African surfing in every sense of the word. Raised on South Beach, Larmont’s ocean odyssey began with borrowed surf mats and a dream. By the time he was a teenager, he was hand-shaping boards with a breadknife, launching a movement that would define a generation. His story surges from the heady surf culture of the 1960s and ’70s – a time of wild waves, wild parties and fierce freedom – through the challenges of sporting isolation in the 1980s, to the renaissance that followed. Along the way, Larmont became a world traveller and entrepreneur: making connections with local and international legends, manufacturing boards and other surfing gear, running the local franchise of global brands such as Rip Curl, co-founding Zigzag magazine, spearheading the rise of windsurfing in South Africa, and coaching South African surfers in world championships. His journey is one of grit and grace – from underground shaper to international icon, surviving shootouts, wipeouts and the relentless tides of change. Told with honesty, humour and heart, Godfather of the Waves captures the untamed spirit of surfing and the soul of a man who never stopped chasing the next perfect ride.
On a defining evening of the 1980s, Donald Trump hosted celebrities and high rollers in a Jersey Shore town to witness 21-year-old Mike Tyson knock out Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds, earning more than the annual payrolls of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics combined. Only eight years earlier, Tyson, a troubled child from Brooklyn, was taken under the wing of boxing legend Cus D’Amato in upstate New York. Their story of mutual redemption captivated novelists, screenwriters, and the emerging cable TV industry. Tyson became HBO’s leading man long before Tony Soprano. Despite the immense success, Tyson's story was more complex and darker than it appeared. Over the decades, he has been villainized, lionized, and fetishized―but never fully humanized until now. Acclaimed biographer Mark Kriegel, who first encountered Tyson as a young reporter, explores Tyson's life through what he survived rather than whom he knocked out. Tyson, often compared to Jack Dempsey, was more akin to Sonny Liston―Black, feared, and expected to die young. What made Liston a pariah made Tyson a touchstone for a generation influenced by hip hop and gunfire. Kriegel captures not just Tyson’s rise but his profound impact on the American psyche.
Paul Kruger: Toesprake en korrespondensie van 1881–1900 probeer om die klem te plaas op minder bekende briefwisseling en optredes van Kruger om sodoende ’n verteenwoordigende beeld van staatspresident Kruger se werksaamhede en standpunte aan te bied. Die teks is deeglik toegelig met ophelderende voetnote. Verder is ’n algemene inleiding, agtergrondsinligting en -ontleding verskaf by elke toepaslike breër tydperk in Kruger se lewe tot 1900. Die beeld wat van Kruger na vore kom uit ’n deeglike ontleding van veral sy minder bekende korrespondensie en toesprake, verskil dikwels ingrypend van dit wat oor ’n lang tydperk in publikasies oor hom aangebied is. Hierdie publikasie vervul daarom ’n belangrike behoefte: Dit stel die leser in staat om regstreeks deur die lees en bestudering van Kruger se standpunte tot eie en nuwe gevolgtrekkings te kom.
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.
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.
'It is through that choice of taking a resistance road, the one less travelled, that I got to experience a liberated life.' Patric Tariq Mellet took his first steps on this road at the tender age of 8 and by 13, he engaged in his first consequential and difficult political act. He organised a fast in his high school to protest the killing of anti-apartheid cleric, Imam Abdullah Haron in detention. The match had been lit. Arbitrarily classified as 'white' despite his heritage and family, he was ordered to join the armed forces. He refused as he could not take up arms against his own people. Instead he heeded the call of OR Tambo and joined resistance as an MK in exile. Mellet's autobiography demonstrates a spirit of innate and unbridled resistance, in small and major ways, that liberated Cleaner's Boy from an unpromising and tragic early life to a life of influence driven by a deep understanding of identity. A freedom fighter, a mystic and always a firebrand.
Dogtag Memories is a raw, darkly humorous memoir that follows Jon Goetzsche’s chaotic journey through South Africa’s military machine. Drafted into the Defence Force in 1977as a carefree seventeen-year-old, Jon’s tranquil schooldays are abruptly replaced by the brutal regimentation of army life. What begins as naive indifference soon spirals into a struggle against authority, misfortune and the absurdities of war. After surviving the gruelling training to become a Parabat, Jon is court-martialled for assaulting a fellow soldier and sent to Detention Barracks. Reassigned to an ordinary infantry battalion, he completes five months of training and is sent to the border for the rest of his two years’ national service, followed by several camps. Through the laughable rules, harsh punishment, grinding boredom, fatal mishaps and clashes with enemy guerrillas, he endures with wit, irony and a stubborn refusal to surrender his humanity. Told with unflinching honesty and biting humour, Dogtag Memories transcends the typical border war narrative. Decades later, Jon reflects on how those formative years shaped him, offering a poignant, irreverent and deeply human account of camaraderie, hardship and resilience.
Eben Etzebeth is the most-capped player in South African rugby history.
A towering lock, his intelligence, energy and aggression on the pitch
is feared, respected, often imitated but never matched.
Eben Etzebeth is tans die speler wat al die meeste toetswedstryde in
die Suid-Afrikaanse rugbygeskiedenis gespeel het. Op die veld word
hierdie ellelange slot se intelligensie, energie en aggressie gevrees,
gerespekteer en dikwels nageboots – maar hy bly ongeëwenaard.
Yusuf Daniels brings this book to life with some epic stories from falling in love for the first time, parading in his orange Speedo on Clifton Beach to travelling the world as a flight attendant, experiencing life like you have never seen before. "We are all different and we all have been through many experiences in life. Some good and some not so good. What I have discovered is that this journey which is filled with laughter, tears, regrets, mistakes, and multiple chapters in our life, prepares us for later in life. If all of this didn’t happen to me, I would not have finished my second book. If you told me this just over a year ago, that I would be releasing my second book, I would have told you that you are crazy. It is our legacy and we need to leave it behind so it can be told by our great grandchildren one day. Don’t be scared to tell your story, don’t be scared to write it the way you feel it should be written. You don’t need a degree to be able to write your stories. Just look at me. There is no ONE way of writing, as we are all individuals and all unique. Don’t listen to the naysayers as they are just there to stall your growth and take you with them on their negative path. Stay positive, be true to yourself and just be you, because there’s only one of you. So, make the best of you and keep on LIVING LEKKA."
As grootoog seun in die ou Oos-Transvaal het Louis Jansen van Vuuren
nooit kon dink dat hy eendag die Franse kunswerke in ’n ensiklopie in
sy pa se studeerkamer in lewende lywe sou sien nie, wat nog te sê dat
hy ’n château in die Franse platteland sou besit.
When the body breaks and the mind spirals, this is what it takes to fight your way back. Born with a congenital aortic valve defect, Brandon Fairweather was always destined for open-heart surgery but never expected to need it at just 28 years of age. He shares his encounters with gripping spells of physiological and medical-related anxiety on his journey to, and beyond, the life-changing surgery. After years of struggle, and determined to no longer let the crippling disorder rule his life, he resolved to document the process as a form of therapy, but also in the hope that it might help others battling similar mental turmoil. Following successful heart surgery in 2011, Brandon experienced several further complications, including a stroke ten years later, followed by a devastating, life-threatening loss of blood in the same year. Adding insult to injury was a brutal cancer diagnosis in 2023, after a misdiagnosis the year before. The Hell Inside Our Heads is an inspirational journaling of thoughts and a discovery of meaning and happiness born from the depths of severe anxiety. Readers are encouraged to flip the narrative from pain to purpose and to use adversity as an advantage. The ambition in this book is simple: to feel healed, healthy and stronger, while offering practical, effective lessons to navigate mental health struggles with greater ease. This deeply personal account of life at the height of severe anxiety combines vulnerability, authenticity, humour, and practical solutions to help manage day-to-day anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. It’s a patient’s perspective, filled with golden nuggets of coping mechanisms and processes aimed at short- to medium-term peace and recovery.
The blazing, untold story of a man who lived in the orbit of a giant, and finally managed to escape the sun. For decades, Peter Venison stood in the shadow of the volcanic brilliance of Sol Kerzner, the hotel-world titan whose vision reshaped skylines and rewrote the rules of luxury. Together they conjured empires: Sun City, the Lost City, Atlantis, the Royal Mirage. But this isn’t just a backstage pass to the world’s most audacious resorts. It’s a memoir of survival – of ambition, obsession, loyalty, betrayal, and the strange gravity of genius. Venison takes us from bombed-out Beirut to deals forged in the palaces of Dubai; from boardroom battles waged in London basements to working with designers like Giorgio Armani who demanded perfection down to the last pleat. We watch the corporate wars that followed Venison’s acrimonious breakup with Sol, fought across continents and fuelled by egos. Beyond the fireworks, this book reveals a world few outsiders ever glimpse: post-apartheid power broking in Alexandra shebeens; the birth of Tsogo Sun; royal dinners at Windsor Castle; Mandela and Muhammad Ali leaving rooms breathless with grace. Bold,witty,reflective and fiercely candid, ESCAPING THE SUN is not just the story of an empire-builder’s right-hand man – it’s a memoir about Venison stepping out of Kerzner’s blaze, reclaiming his light and understanding that the real legacy of a life well lived isn’t just the monuments built, but the meaning found beyond them.
Chasing the Internet, a revised version of Life Lessons: How to Fail and Win, chronicles Alan Knott-Craig’s relentless pursuit to bridge South Africa’s digital divide, taking readers from his early entrepreneurial struggles to building one of the country’s most innovative connectivity companies. This isn’t just another startup story – it’s a blueprint for purpose-driven entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Learn powerful lessons about partnerships, leadership transitions, and knowing when to bring in new talent to scale. Find out why tackling ‘hard things’ like township connectivity creates unbeatable competitive advantages. Be inspired by fibertime’s remarkable turnaround story. See that purpose and innovative thinking can transform both businesses and communities. This is the story of chasing an impossible dream and actually catching it.
Kylian Mbappé is a global football superstar. A world champion at the age of nineteen in Russia, the World Cup's Golden Boot four years later in Qatar, the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final since Geoff Hurst in 1966, the winner of twelve major honours with Paris Saint-Germain. Mbappé is still only 26, wears the shirt of Real Madrid and is captain of France's national team. At its core this book tells the ascent of a child of immigrants who rose to become the world's best player. But Mbappé's story is far more - his ascent was planned from the beginning, in a way no other sports career had been orchestrated before. Kylian Mbappé's trajectory was mapped out from a very early age by his family, with the player's full consent. For Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the brand was developed as a consequence of their exceptional playing achievements. For Mbappé, the plan was in place before he'd played a minute of football with his first professional club, AS Monaco. He was only six years old when Nike knocked on his parents' door and gave him his first sponsorship contract. His name was trademarked worldwide before he'd won his first cap for France. Every move, every decision has been calculated from the outset. Yes, Mbappé is a generational talent, and an exceptionally smart individual who looks as much at ease at the Elysée palace as on the pitch. But what truly sets him apart is that he is not just a sportsman: he is a project. This book tells that story for the first time.
"His ability to overcome adversity and pain, even in the face of death, is what makes Grant truly unique." – Edwin Moses, Olympic Gold Medallist He was told he would never cycle again. But South African ultra-endurance cyclist Grant Lottering doesn’t take no for an answer. In 2013, Lottering’s heart stopped after a gruesome accident in the Italian Alps. Doctors said he would never ride again. Since then, he has completed many gruelling rides through some of the toughest terrain on the planet. The first South African to complete a solo, non-stop 420-kilometre ultra-endurance ride through the northern French Alps in under 24 hours, Lottering has endured numerous rides previously thought to be impossible, while raising millions for charities. Grant Lottering is a highly regarded motivational speaker and ambassador for Laureus Sport for Good. His story – proving that the human body can achieve the near impossible if you have the right mindset – is an inspiration to millions. "Perseverance, resilience and determination personified". – Bryan Habana
Four decades ago, The Solution, a best-seller co-authored by Leon Louw, helped shape South Africa’s political settlement and left an indelible imprint on its Constitution. Today, the country finds itself at an economic impasse once more – and Louw’s ideas feel more urgent than ever. From his early battles against apartheid-era property laws to his international advocacy for economic freedom, this book explores what worked, what didn’t, and what still might. With clarity and courage, Cohen distills Louw’s enduring belief: that prosperity and justice flow from empowering people, not politicians. For policymakers, political thinkers, and all who care about South Africa’s future, this is more than a biography – it’s an invitation to think differently. Perhaps, even, to wake the continent’s economic lion from its long slumber. In this deeply researched and elegantly told account, Tim Cohen – one of South Africa’s most respected and incisive financial journalists – draws on hours of conversations with Louw to capture the man behind the ideas. The result is a rare and revealing portrait of the extraordinary life, philosophy, and influence of a maverick libertarian who championed liberty, enterprise, and accountability when it mattered most. |
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