Bill Gates is extremely wealthy.  But money can’t buy you great timing, finesse, or apparently the pragmatic sense needed to weigh the room or process the mood of the country before taking action on something that may have been of value in the past. 

As he’s mired in the middle of a nasty divorce with wife Melinda, where we’ve learned that Bill apparently loves the ladies as much as he loved writing computer code back in the day, Gates decided to do what he normally does this time of year: release his summer reading list. 

It’s been an annual tradition, but it seemed to carry more weight when we didn’t know Gates was an old pal of Jeffrey Epstein and someone who would take a weird, yearly vacation with his ex-girlfriend. 

Oh well, here we go, the five books Bill recommended on his blog that focus on the relationship between humanity and nature and focus on “what happens when people come into conflict with the world around them.”

Four non-fiction books and one fiction page turner.  

  1. 1. “A Promised Land”

Author: Barack Obama

This is the former President’s memoir. 

Bill’s review:  “I wish more politicians could write like Obama. ‘A Promised Land’ almost reads like a novel, because he’s so good at connecting each individual event into one big narrative.”

2. “An Elegant Defense: The extraordinary new science of the immune system: A Tale in four Lives”

Author: Matt Richtel

Forget about reading five books over the summer. There’s millions of Americans that would be lucky if they could get through just the title of this book by Labor Day!

Bill’s review:  “You’ll come away with a much better understanding of our immune system’s awesome complexity — and the delicate, even precarious, tradeoffs inherent in its workings.”

3.  “The Overstory”

This is the only novel on Bill’s list. So I guess Snooki’s novel called “Polizzi: A Shore Thing” didn’t make the cut?

Bill’s review:  “This isn’t a book where everything gets tied up with a bow. Some of the characters meet up with each other, and others have totally separate stories. In the end, it’s not clear whether you’re supposed to see their actions as morally right or just kind of crazy,”

4. Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric

Author: Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann

Nothing like a light, breezy, summer read on the fall of an epic American brand. How uplifting.

Bill’s review: 

“At times, it was a bit hard for me, as a former CEO, to read such harsh criticism of fellow leaders, including people I know and like. But I got a lot out of reading this book. Gryta and Mann gave me the detailed insight I was looking for into the culture, decisions, and accounting that eventually caught up to GE in a gigantic way,”

5. “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future”

Author:  Elizabeth Kolbert

Bill apparently loves books that have colons in the title!

Bill’s review:  “As I’ve come to expect from Elizabeth’s work, she explains gene drive and geoengineering in a compelling and lucid way,”

Enjoy your books Bill. It’s a much better way to spend your time than reading stories about your love life and divorce. 

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