Second Act

"Henry Oliver is a rare talent: smart, funny and insightful. SECOND ACT showcases his wide reading, deep understanding and playful prose style. Read this book to discover why it's never too late for a second act in your own life."

HELEN LEWIS, author of Difficult Women

Have you ever dreamed that you might be far more successful than you are today? Our society tells us over and over that if we're going to achieve anything, we'd better do it while we're young. But whether you're at the start of your career, sensing you're on the wrong path, or feeling unsettled later in life, you're likely wondering just how to reinvent yourself? Have you left it too late?

This book has answers. Late bloomers - individuals who experience significant success later in life - offer lessons for people who feel frustrated. This book encourages people to think about themselves as potential late bloomers and to discover and encourage and advocate for late blooming in others. After all, it's never too late to discover our hidden talents and our accomplish our goals - the road to success is never as straightforward as we are lead to believe. Julia Child didn't discover that she loved to cook until she was thirty-seven. Vera Wang started her design business at forty. And Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment in his sixties.

This inspiring, passionate book combines wonderful storytellingwith fascinating new research, to shift expectations around our life trajectories. You'll discover a range of blueprints for self-reinvention, pairing the newest insights from psychology and neuroscience with late bloomers' remarkable life stories, from Penelope Fitzgerald to Samuel Johnson, from Frank Lloyd-Wright to Malcolm X.

When we feel defined by the past we can struggle to see a different future. With its mix of compelling stories and persuasive evidence, Second Act will make you realise that, far from being done, you haven't even got started yet. -- Ian Leslie, author of Born Liars and Curious
Success and failure are often seen as all too reliant on time. Work for long enough and you'll get there, or be precocious early on and you'll do great. This is not just untrue, it maligns the human condition. Henry's book is a brilliant ode to the infinite variety of human experience. Using stories from those who have done this before, he shows past is not prologue, future is in fact unwritten, and achieving excellence is not age dependent! -- Rohit Krishnan, investor
Henry Oliver is a rare talent: smart, funny and insightful. SECOND ACT showcases his wide reading, deep understanding and playful prose style. Read this book to discover why it's never too late for a second act in your own life. -- Helen Lewis, author of Difficult Women
This fascinating well-researched book sparks insights into how talent blooms across all ages and disciplines drawing on lives across politics, culture, business and arts. So absorbed, I read it a single sitting. -- Ben Yeoh, investor and host of Ben Yeoh Chats

Henry Oliver studied English at the University of Oxford, Law at BPP College, and Biography at the University of Buckingham. After a period as a Parliamentary researcher, he spent a decade as a global brand researcher and consultant in talent attraction. He consulted widely with all kinds of organisations, from tech start-ups and specialist auditors to FTSE 100 retailers and Fortune 500 banks. His clients were senior executives in HR, talent attraction, and marketing.

In 2022 he was awarded an Emergent Ventures grant by the prominent economist and thinker Tyler Cowen to fund a book about late bloomers and talent. His blog, 'The Common Reader', has five thousand subscribers and was named by Helen Lewis as one of her favourite Substacks.

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