Bill Gates Summer Reading List
If youre looking for something to read this summer, Id recommend any of the books below. I read them all earlier this year and each…
Bill Gates and his readings. (Flickr/Michelle Andonian/ OnInnovation)
If youre looking for something to read this summer, Id recommend any of the books below. I read them all earlier this year and each one is terrific. Only one, The Rosie Project, qualifies as a typical beach read. But all six are deeply informative and beautifully written, writes Bill Gates in his blog YES BILL GATES has his own blog like any one of us humble mortals and he recommends books. Here the list of summer readings by the Microsoft mogul.
Business Adventures (Photo Amazon)
Business Adventures, by John Brooks. Warren Buffett recommended this book to me back in 1991, and its still the best business book Ive ever read. Even though Brooks wrote more than four decades ago, he offers sharp insights into timeless fundamentals of business, like the challenge of building a large organization, hiring people with the right skills, and listening to customers feedback. He is also a masterful storyteller, peppering his articles with compelling portraits of everyone from General Electric executives to the founder of Piggly Wiggly groceries. His article on the fate of the Ford Motor Companys Edsel is a classic. Business Adventures is out of print in hardcover and paperback, but you can now buy it in e-book form. And you can download chapter 5, Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox, free. I wish all business writing were half as good.
Stress Test, by Timothy F. Geithner. The central irony of Stress Test is that a guy who was accused of being a lousy communicator as U.S. Treasury Secretary has penned a book that is such a good read. Geithner paints a compelling human portrait of what it was like to be fighting a global financial meltdown while at the same time fighting critics inside and outside the Administration as well as his own severe guilt over his near-total absence from his family. The politics of fighting financial crises will always be ugly. But it helps if the public knows a little more about the subjectwhats at stake, what the options are, what has worked in similar situationsso that the loud talkers resonate a bit less and the knowledgeable ones a bit more. If Stress Test continues to attract lay readers, it could make at least a modest difference the next time around.
SEE ALSO: Bill Gates Bookshelf.
The Bully Pulpit (Photo Amazon)
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I read a lot about Teddy Roosevelt last year, around the time Melinda and I took our kids to the Panama Canal. He was instrumental in getting the canal built, and Id assumed it was the highlight of his career. But it wasnt. Its a testament to the breadth and depth of Roosevelts accomplishments that the canal warrants only a handful of mentions in this biography. Theres just too much other fascinating material competing for space, from Roosevelts relationship with the press and his friendship with William Howard Taft (who was brilliant in his own right) to his efforts to fight corruption and reform the political system.
Im especially interested in the central question that Goodwin raises: How does social change happen? Can it be driven by a single inspirational leader, or do other factors have to lay the groundwork first? Sometimes a single leader can make a big difference: In the field of global health, Jim Grant almost singlehandedly created a global constituency for children, sparking a movement to double vaccination rates and save millions of lives. But Roosevelts case was different. Although he tried to push through a number of political reforms earlier in his career, he wasnt really successful until journalists at McClures and other publications had rallied public support for change.
SEE ALSO: Notable books by out favorite Hispanic authors.
The Rosie Project: A Novel, by Graeme Simsion. Melinda picked up this novel earlier this year, and she loved it so much that she kept stopping to read passages to me. I started it myself at 11 p.m. one Saturday and stayed up with it until 3 the next morning. Anyone who occasionally gets overly logical will identify with the hero, a genetics professor with Aspergers Syndrome who goes looking for a wife. (Melinda thought I would appreciate the parts where hes a little too obsessed with optimizing his schedule. She was right.) Its a funny and profound book about being comfortable with who you are and what youre good at. Im sending copies to several friends and hope to re-read it later this year. It is one of the most enjoyable novels Ive read in a long time.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert. Climate change is a big problemone of the biggest well face this centurybut its not the only environmental concern on the horizon. Humans are putting down massive amounts of pavement, moving species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, and more. Natural scientists posit that there have been five extinction events in the Earths history (think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs), and Kolbert makes a compelling case that human activity is leading to the sixth. Unlike a lot of people who write about the environment, Kolbert doesnt resort to hype. She just lays out the facts and wraps them in memorable anecdotes. Its a sobering but engaging and informative read.
Reinventing American Health Care (Photo Amazon)
Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System, by Ezekiel J. Emanuel. One of the architects of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) makes the case for why the U.S. health care system needed reform and how Obamacare sets out to fix the problems. Although he was deeply involved in its creation, Emanuel is good about making it clear when hes educating you about the history of health care and when hes advocating for his ideas. He calls out a few things he disagreed with in Obamacare, like the creation of a separate health-insurance exchange for small businesses. And unlike a lot of experts, hes willing to make predictions about how health care will change in the coming years. Some day well be able to look back and see whether he was right. The facts and history that Emanuel lays out would be useful to anyone involved in the debate over health care, no matter what their point of view is.
To read the full reviews go to: 6 Bools I´d Recommend
