12 Books Bill Gates Thinks Everyone Should Read
Bill Gates: “Reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding.”
1. TAP DANCING TO WORK –By Carol Loomis
A Fortune magazine journalist compiled a collection of articles and essays about and by Warren Buffett. Getting into the mind of Buffett is “an extremely worthwhile use of time,” Gates says.
Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major article that supplies context and her own informed point of view. Readers will gain fresh insights into Buffett’s investment strategies and his thinking on management, philanthropy, public policy, and even parenting.
2. STRESS TEST –By Tim Geithner
The Essential Work on Financial Crises by Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner
As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In this candid and historically important memoir he gives his perspective on those years, explaining the hard choices he had to make to repair a broken financial system and prevent the collapse of the American and world economy.
Secretary Geithner takes readers inside the room as the crisis began, intensified and burned out of control. This book is the gripping account of how America withstood the ultimate stress test of its political and financial systems. It is an invaluable guide to how governments can better manage financial crises. And it is an essential historical record that will remain powerful and relevant for decades to come.
3.THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY –By Elizabeth Kolbert
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth.
Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species – including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino – some already gone, others at the point of vanishing.
The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy and Elizabeth Kolbert’s book urgently compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
4. MAKING THE MODERN WORLD –By Vaclav Smil
This book explores the costs of the dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies.
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization and potential constrains on materials.
This interdisciplinary text provides useful perspectives for readers with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing and material science.
5. BUSINESS ADVENTURES –By John Brooks
Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. Longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks’s insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history repeats itself.
Five additional stories on equally fascinating subjects round out this wonderful collection that will both entertain and inform readers . . . Business Adventures is truly financial journalism at its liveliest and best.
6. THE BULLY PULPIT –By Doris Kearns Goodwin
This biography uses the presidency as a lens for understanding the shift of society. “How does social change happen?” Gates asks. “
Can it be driven by a single inspirational leader, or do other factors have to lay the groundwork first?”
7. THE MAN WHO FED THE WORLD –By Leon Hesser
Norman Borlaug was the only person during the twentieth century who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for work in agriculture and food. There is no Nobel Food Prize, so the Nobel Committee chose Dr. Borlaug as the 1970 recipient of the Peace Prize based on his dramatic scientific breakthroughs and wheat production technology that relieved hunger in much of the world. During the previous decade, many people on the planet Earth, most notably in China and the Asian Subcontinent, were facing starvation, even famine. Borlaug’s revolutionary achievements relieved widespread human suffering and brought peace.
Dr. Borlaug was hailed as the person who saved the lives of more people–hundreds of millions–from starvation than any person in history. He earned the distinction as one of the 100 most influential individuals of the 20th century. His is an inspiring story; he went from an unpretentious Iowa farm boy to scientist-cum-humanist of world acclaim.
8. THE ROSIE PROJECT –By Graeme Simsion
Gates wife, Melinda, recommended this book to him. “Anyone who occasionally gets overly logical will identify with the hero, a genetics professor with Asperger’s syndrome who goes looking for a wife, ” he says.
9.ON IMMUNITY –By Eula Biss
In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear—fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in your children’s air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Reflecting on her own experience as a new mother, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our conception of immunity and its implications for the individual and the social body. She extends a conversation with other mothers to meditations on Voltaire’s Candide, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Susan Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond. On Immunity is an inoculation against our fear and a moving account of how we are all interconnected—our bodies and our fates.
10.HOW ASIA WORKS –By Joe Studwell
In the 1980s and 1990s many in the West came to believe in the myth of an East-Asian economic miracle, with countries seen as not just development prodigies but as a unified bloc, culturally and economically similar, and inexorably on the rise. In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distils extensive research into the economics of nine countries—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China—into an accessible, readable narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished. Impressive in scope, How Asia Works is essential reading for anyone interested in a region that will shape the future of the world.
11.HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS –By Darrell Huff
From distorted graphs and biased samples to misleading averages, there are countless statistical dodges that lend cover to anyone with an axe to grind or a product to sell. With abundant examples and illustrations, Darrell Huff’s lively and engaging primer clarifies the basic principles of statistics and explains how they’re used to present information in honest and not-so-honest ways. Now even more indispensable in our data-driven world than it was when first published, How to Lie with Statistics is the book that generations of readers have relied on to keep from being fooled.
12. THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE — By Steve Pinker
Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species’ existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind’s inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker’s exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.
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