If you’re looking for a good book to read or gift this holiday season, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has you covered.
Gates released his holiday reading list on Tuesday, with four recommendations on what to read as the year draws to a close. Though Gates says he didn’t pick these books with a set theme in mind, he acknowledges that all four do share something in common: making sense of the world and understanding it a little better.
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“It’s natural to try and wrap your head around things during times of rapid change like we’re living through now,” Gates wrote.
Bill Gates. Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Gates releases book recommendations often, including past summer and holiday book lists.
Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and is currently worth $165 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Here are his 2024 holiday picks.
The Anxious Generation
“The Anxious Generation,” a 400-page New York Times Bestseller by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, traces the mental health decline of today’s youth to a phone-based childhood, which became the norm in the 2010s. The book also offers solutions for parents, teachers, and governments.
“It’s kind of a scary book, but very convincing,” Gates said in a video announcement, adding that Haidt, unlike some authors, “actually has some prescriptions, like kids not using phones until much later, and parenting style differences.”
An Unfinished Love Story
“An Unfinished Love Story” by Doris Kearns Goodwin is a 480-page autobiography about the author’s life with her late husband Richard Goodwin. The two were married for 42 years; Richard Goodwin was a policy expert to President Lyndon B. Johnson and helped architect Johnson’s Great Society program in the 1960s, a set of policies targeted at ending poverty.
“It’s a story about Lyndon Johnson, but I found the book surprisingly timely,” Gates said in the video. He characterized the sixties as “kind of a crazy time,” and that Goodwin, “paints the picture pretty well.”
The Coming Wave
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s “The Coming Wave” is a 352-page exploration of how artificial intelligence is poised to transform industries and the way the world works. Suleyman talks about how competition between companies and countries has led to billions of dollars invested in AI. Microsoft alone has poured more than $13 billion into OpenAI, for example.
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“Of all the books on AI, that’s the one I recommend the most,” Gates stated in the video.
Engineering in Plain Sight
Engineering in Plain Sight is a 264-page illustrated guide written by Grady Hillhouse, the YouTuber behind the channel Practical Engineering, which has over four million subscribers. The book demystifies how everyday technology works, from cell phone towers to bridges, in a visual, easily understandable way.
“The environment we live in, there’s an electrical network, there’s a water network, there’s a cable TV network, there’s a mobile phone network, there’s natural gas being distributed to houses, and it’s all kind of miraculous stuff,” Gates said in the video. “You can either just ignore it or I think it’s kind of fun to understand.”
