Search for books, people and lists
Read This Twice
HomePeopleBooksLibrariesSign In

Bill Gates

Recommended Books

Bill Gates is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs and pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
164 books on the list
Sort by
Latest Recommendations First
Layout
How the World Really Works book cover
How the World Really Works
The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
Vaclav Smil - 2022-05-10
Goodreads Rating
An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible--a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish.We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fund...
Bill Gates
2022-08-28T21:16:47.000Z
Summer’s almost over. If you have time to sneak in another book or two – here are a few I recommend.      source
The Lincoln Highway book cover
The Lincoln Highway
A Novel
Amor Towles - 2021-10-05
Goodreads Rating
The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s AmericaIn June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. Hi...
Bill Gates
2022-08-28T21:16:47.000Z
Summer’s almost over. If you have time to sneak in another book or two – here are a few I recommend.      source
The Ministry for the Future book cover
The Ministry for the Future
A Novel
Kim Stanley Robinson - 2020-10-06
Goodreads Rating
From the visionary, New York Times bestselling author of New York 2140 comes a near-future novel that is a gripping exploration of climate change, technology, politics, and the human behaviors that drive these forces. Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's future generations and to protect a...
Bill Gates
2022-08-28T21:16:47.000Z
Summer’s almost over. If you have time to sneak in another book or two – here are a few I recommend.      source
Why We're Polarized book cover
Why We're Polarized
Ezra Klein - 2020-01-28
Goodreads Rating
Discover how American politics became a toxic system, why we participate in it, and what it means for our future--from journalist, political commentator, and cofounder of Vox, Ezra Klein.After Election Day 2016, both supporters and opponents of the soon-to-be president hailed his victory as a historically unprecedented event. Most Americans could a...
Bill Gates
2022-08-28T21:16:47.000Z
Summer’s almost over. If you have time to sneak in another book or two – here are a few I recommend.      source
Also recommended by
Andrew YangSteve Kerr
The Power book cover
The Power
Naomi Alderman - 2017-10-27 (first published in 2016)
Goodreads Rating
In THE POWER, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastati...
Bill Gates
2022-08-28T21:16:47.000Z
Summer’s almost over. If you have time to sneak in another book or two – here are a few I recommend.      source
Also recommended by
Barack ObamaOlivia Wilde
Hamnet book cover
Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell - 2021-05-18 (first published in 2020)
Goodreads Rating
Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, HAMNET is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child. Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley st...
Bill Gates
2021-11-22T00:00:00.000Z
If you’re a Shakespeare fan, you’ll love this moving novel about how his personal life might’ve influenced the writing of one of his most famous plays. O’Farrell has built her story on two facts we know to be true about “The Bard”: his son Hamnet died at the age of 11, and a couple years later, Shakespeare wrote a tragedy called Hamlet. I especially enjoyed reading about his wife, Anne, who is imagined here as an almost supernatural figure.      source
Project Hail Mary book cover
Project Hail Mary
A Novel
Andy Weir - 2021-05-04
Goodreads Rating
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission--and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's ju...
Bill Gates
2021-11-22T00:00:00.000Z
Like most people, I was first introduced to Weir’s writing through The Martian. His latest novel is a wild tale about a high school science teacher who wakes up in a different star system with no memory of how he got there. The rest of the story is all about how he uses science and engineering to save the day. It’s a fun read, and I finished the whole thing in one weekend.      source
The Code Breaker book cover
The Code Breaker
Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Walter Isaacson - 2021-03-09
Goodreads Rating
The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a ...
Bill Gates
2021-11-22T00:00:00.000Z
The CRISPR gene editing system is one of the coolest and perhaps most consequential scientific breakthroughs of the last decade. I’m familiar with it because of my work at the foundation—we’re funding a number of projects that use the technology—but I still learned a lot from this comprehensive and accessible book about its discovery by Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues. Isaacson does a good job highlighting the most important ethical questions around gene editing.      source
Klara and the Sun book cover
Klara and the Sun
A novel
Kazuo Ishiguro - 2021-03-02
Goodreads Rating
Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains ho...
Bill Gates
2021-11-22T00:00:00.000Z
I love a good robot story, and Ishiguro’s novel about an “artificial friend” to a sick young girl is no exception. Although it takes place in a dystopian future, the robots aren’t a force for evil. Instead, they serve as companions to keep people company. This book made me think about what life with super intelligent robots might look like—and whether we’ll treat these kinds of machines as pieces of technology or as something more.      source
A Thousand Brains book cover
A Thousand Brains
A New Theory of Intelligence
Jeff Hawkins - 2021-03-02
Goodreads Rating
An author, neuroscientist, and computer engineer unveils a theory of intelligence, of understanding the brain and the future of AI. For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures ...
Bill Gates
2021-11-22T00:00:00.000Z
Few subjects have captured the imaginations of science fiction writers like artificial intelligence. If you’re interested in learning more about what it might take to create a true AI, this book offers a fascinating theory. Hawkins may be best known as the co-inventor of the PalmPilot, but he’s spent decades thinking about the connections between neuroscience and machine learning, and there’s no better introduction to his thinking than this book.      source
Range book cover
Range
David Epstein - 2021-04-27
Numbers Don't Lie by Vaclav Smil
Breath from Salt by Bijal P. Trivedi
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Elegant Defense, An by Matt Richtel
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The Man Who Fed the World by Leon Hesser
Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit V. Banerjee
Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella
Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope
These Truths by Jill Lepore
Growth by Vaclav Smil
The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger
Prepared by Diane Tavenner
Tools and Weapons by Brad Smith
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre
Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler
The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion
Upheaval by Jared Diamond
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Blueprint by Nicholas A. Christakis
Army of None by Paul Scharre
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
The Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier
Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil
Nine Pints by Rose George
Capitalism without Capital by Jonathan Haskel
Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss
Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
The Choice by Edith Eva Eger
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Origin Story by David Christian
The New Science of Strong Materials by James Edward Gordon
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
Tomorrow's Table by Pamela C. Ronald
Educated by Tara Westover
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Principles by Ray Dalio
The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
The Grid by Gretchen Bakke
Believe Me by Eddie Izzard
The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Epic Measures by Jeremy N. Smith
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
Energy by Vaclav Smil
Heart by Maylis de Kerangal
Energy Transitions by Vaclav Smil
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
A Full Life by Jimmy Carter
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
The Vital Question by Nick Lane
Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
String Theory by David Foster Wallace
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Box by Marc Levinson
Being Nixon by Evan Thomas
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe
Sustainable Materials Without the Hot Air by Julian M. Allwood
On Immunity by Eula Biss
Harvesting the Biosphere by Vaclav Smil
The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion
How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
The Great Escape by Angus Deaton
Stress Test by Timothy F. Geithner
The Myth of the Strong Leader by Archie Brown
The Road to Character by David Brooks
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
Eradication by Nancy Leys Stepan
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
The Power to Compete by Hiroshi Mikitani
The Idealist by Nina Munk
What If? by Randall Munroe
Business Adventures by John Brooks
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
How Asia Works by Joe Studwell
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Reinventing American Health Care by Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Tap Dancing to Work by Carol J. Loomis
Making the Modern World by Vaclav Smil
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Interventions by Kofi Annan
The Bet by Paul Sabin
Should We Eat Meat? by Vaclav Smil
Prime Movers of Globalization by Vaclav Smil
Poor Numbers by Morten Jerven
The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Change.edu by Andrew S Rosen
Getting Better by Charles Kenny
Awakening Joy by James Baraz
The Quest by Daniel Yergin
The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins
The Cost of Hope by Amanda Bennett
The Art of Being Unreasonable by Eli Broad
Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee
The Most Powerful Idea in the World by William Rosen
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
For the Love of Physics by Walter Lewin
A World-Class Education by Vivien Stewart
The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard P. Feynman
Get Some Headspace by Andy Puddicombe
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
That Used to Be Us by Thomas L. Friedman
Class Warfare by Steven Brill
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Fever by Sonia Shah
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
House on Fire by William H. Foege
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt
Life Is What You Make It by Peter Buffett
Academically Adrift by Richard Arum
Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Value-Added Measures in Education by Douglas N. Harris
Stretching the School Dollar by Frederick M. Hess
xkcd by Randall Munroe
Energy Myths and Realities by Vaclav Smil
In FED We Trust by David Wessel
Educational Economics by Marguerite Roza
Liberating Learning by Terry M. Moe
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air by David JC MacKay
Work Hard. Be Nice. by Jay Mathews
The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier
Mindset by Carol S. Dweck
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Polio by David M. Oshinsky
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
Creating the Twentieth Century by Vaclav Smil
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Jim Grant by United Nations
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
One Billion Hungry by