On Your Marks with Prof Jonathan Marks
I am a business school professor based in South Africa and working, teaching and researching in the field of high growth entrepreneurship. My current podcast season is a weekly review of non-fiction books - I have set the challenge of 52 books in 52 weeks. I share the review by way of a short podcast (approx 15 mins) and an infographic. These are free resources - just subscribe at www.jonathanmarks.co.za/books to get these sent to your email inbox each Tuesday morning.
Episodes
51 episodes
Book Review Where The Crawdads Sing
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
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Season 1
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Episode 52
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10:25
Book Review 12 Rules For Life & Beyond Order
Jordan B. Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, self-help writer, cultural critic and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are abnormal, social, and personality psychology, with a particular inte...
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19:53
Book Review A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough
I am 94. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary.As a young man, I felt I was out in the wild, experiencing the entire natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been ha...
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Season 1
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Episode 59
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16:50
Book Review Life is Simple by Johnjoe McFadden
Centuries ago, the principle of Ockham’s razor changed our world by showing simpler answers to be preferable and more often true. In Life Is Simple, scientist Johnjoe McFadden traces centuries of discoveries, taking us from a geocentri...
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Season 1
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Episode 48
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11:17
Book Review Time Off by John Fitch & Max Frenzel
Discover the transformative power of leisure to recapture your calm and creativity. We live in a time where busyness is often seen as a badge of honour. But are your busiest days the ones that make you feel the most accomplished? If all of your...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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11:32
Book Review Shackleton by Ranulph Fiennes
Discover the story of Ernest Shackleton's legendary Antarctic expedition through the words of the world's greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes - one of the only men to understand his experience first-hand . . .To wri...
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Season 1
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Episode 46
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11:43
Book Review The Upstarts by Brad Stone
Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger’s car, or walking into a stranger’s home, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it’s as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb are household names: redefining neighbourh...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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9:08
Book Review Range by David Epstein
What's the most effective path to success in any domain? It's not what you think.Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and r...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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10:06
Book Review How I Built This by Guy Raz
Based on the highly acclaimed NPR podcast, How I Built This with Guy Raz, this book offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs on how to start, launch, and build a successful ...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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9:57
Book Review Let There Be Water by Seth Siegel
The U.S. government predicts that about 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface will not have enough water soon, but most people do not know the crisis. In Let There Be Water, Seth M. Siegel eloquently and masterfully details hundreds of hours of re...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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13:35
Book Review: Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
The book captures the life and achievements of South African entrepreneur and innovator, Elon Musk, the brain behind series of successful enterprises such as PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and Solarcity. The real-life inspiration of the Iron Man Series,...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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10:18
Book Review Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Karatsky
'If you want to achieve more (without going nuts), read this book.' - Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster BetterMost of our time is spent by default. We all wish for more hours in the day. We all ...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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9:45
Book Review Exactly by Simon Winchester
Best-selling author Simon Winchester maps the unique trajectory of the fathers of engineering. The lives of Wilkinson, Whitworth, Maudslay, Bramah, and Ramsden are interwoven with anecdotes such as the invention of the Rolls-Royce and Thomas Je...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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11:05
Book Review The Boy who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
The wonderful tale of William Kamkwamba, a teenage boy living n rural Malawai and his thirst not just for water but for knowledge, purpose and identity. Suffering through incredible poverty, drought and famine, William teaches himself the...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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9:02
Book Review Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiederman
Billion Dollar Loser tells the story of the meteoric rise and fall of Adam Neumann, co-founder of WeWork. This fast-taking and quick-moving Israeli entrepreneur, with no education and no background in real estate, became head of a multi-b...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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13:00
Book Review The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner
The Idea FactoryL Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation is a detailed, beautifully researched and masterfully written book that uncovers the origins of some of the most significant technological innovations of the last century.&nbs...
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11:01
Book Review Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
This classic Stoic text from philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius offers insights into her code of living through 12 books. Settled around the themes of service to society, logic and reasoning and existentialism, the book offers ...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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7:22
Book Review Onward by Howard Schultz
The founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, presents how he and his leadership team returned the company to greatness and profitability after a period of growth that resulted in the core values and ethos of the company fading into the background....
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11:44
Book Review East West Street by Philippe Sands
Philippe Sands’ book is a triumph. He sets out to understand the origins of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’, and in the process constructs a book of remarkable complexity and character. He connects the lives of fo...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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8:22
Book Review The Fail-Safe Startup by Tom Eisenmann
A truly masterful book on entrepreneurship that is timely, expertly written and meticulously researched. Professor Tom Eisenmann is an undisputed world authority on entrepreneurship, having developed a wide range of programmes at Harvard ...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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10:51
Book Review Africa's Business Revolution by Acha Leke, Mutsa Chironga & Georges Desvaux
Africa’s Business revolution is a positive, practical and logical argument and guide for doing business on the African continent. The authors are steeped in African business, and draw on their work as consultants with McKinsey to showcases wond...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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8:23
Book Review The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek’s 5th book, based on the initial work by James Carse in 1986, lays bare the nature of finite and infinite games. Sinek argues that we are surrounded – at least in the world of business, and probably in life, with a series of i...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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12:30
Book Review Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, while over 60 years old, is the fountainhead of the environmental movement. This brave, persistent and intelligent woman, confronted with the intellectual patriarchy and corporate hegemony of 1950’s and 1960’...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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12:43
Book Review The Middle Passage
Dr James Hollis’ book, The Middle Passage is something that will call to some but not to all. A renowned Jungian psychoanalyst, Hollis’ book explores the dialectic of how our early childhood gives way to early adulthood and from there, if...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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12:33
Book Review The Practice by Seth Godin
A disappointing read. The book is a clustering of random stories, observations and vignettes loosely corralled together. There is no coherence to the narrative, and while some of the stories are amusing, this is at best a book to pick up ...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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7:24