Many of Silicon Valley’s tech giants like to read, and they’ve revealed their favourite books so that you can read them, too.

According to Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg’s favourite book is The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore. It’s a novel about who really invented the lightbulb and features the intertwining stories of Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, and George Westinghouse.

If this is all sounding a bit like the fight over who actually invented Facebook, you wouldn’t be wrong – with one major exception. The lightbulb changed everything for the better, whereas Facebook is where human decency and happiness go to die.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is reading Nike founder Phil Knight’s memoir, Shoe Dog, and Spotify’s CCO Dawn Ostroff lists Tara Westover’s memoir Educated as her favourite read.

Evan Spiegel (below with his wife, Miranda Kerr), the CEO of Snap Inc, is reading something that deserves a closer look. It’s titled Mortal Republic.

The book, by prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts, proposes a new history of the fall of Rome – one that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy.

For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean’s premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise.

As an aside, these governing institutions were run almost exclusively by men. Women were considered ‘citizens’ but couldn’t vote or hold political office.

By the 130s BC, however, the aforementioned systems of governance started to break down. Rome’s leaders increasingly used those tools for individual gain and to obstruct their opponents. The centre broke down and dysfunction grew, infighting reigned supreme and violence erupted in the streets.

The scene was set for civil wars and the eventual imperial reign of Augustus.

If all of this is giving you a niggly feeling of familiarity it’s because it sounds a lot like what’s happening in South Africa (and the rest of the world if we’re honest).

South Africa’s democratic system and world-famous Constitution is being marred by infighting in the ANC, public officials who see themselves as above the law and politicians more focused on filling their pockets and maintaining their positions than what’s best for the country at large.

The military is in the Cape Flats, protests and strikes tend to turn violent, racial tension is on the rise and things feel, for the most part, quite unstable.

Then there’s Richard Poplak’s assertion that democracy in South Africa is dead.

On a more positive note, hopefully, we’ve learned enough from the past to avoid a total breakdown.

If you’d like to get your hands on a copy of Mortal Republic, you can find it on Takealot.

[source:businessinsider]