Books Bill Gates recommends today? When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: This book is a memoir of Dr. Paul Kalanithi which tells us about his life, his role as a neurosurgeon and his battle with stage IV metastatic cancer. It was published posthumously. Rapid weight loss and chest pains which were mild initially rapidly grew intense until he realized that instead of saving patients’ lives, now, he was a patient who was struggling to stay alive. How does it feel when all of a sudden your number of days are numbered and you do not have a goal to strive for? How do you live the last days of your life? A heartbreaking and sad memoir that will make a place in your heart as it teaches you the philosophy of life, its struggles and the relationship a doctor and a patient shares as Paul Kalanithi has been both in his lifetime. See more details at https://snapreads.com/magazine/bill-gates-recommended-books/.

Here are the other four books Gates recommends for the summer: “Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles This coming-of-age novel documents three 18-year-olds and an 8-year-old on their frenzied road trip from Nebraska to California in an old Studebaker. “(Towles) seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway,” Gates writes. “Why We’re Polarized” by Ezra Klein The New York Times columnist dissects the inner workings of our current political polarization, offering a history of what got us to this point and also an examination of the underlying psychology. “The groups we self-identify as are a key part of who we are,” Gates writes. “Most of the time, these identities aren’t inherently positive or negative — but each one of them shapes the way we see the world.”

Gates has three offspring and you must think they are very lucky for they will amass all their father’s fortune eventually. But did you know that each of them will only inherit $10 million each? This is just a fraction of their father’s $81.1 billion net worth. “Leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favour to them,” he explained in an interview. Even if multilingual people abound Gates’ family, he is monolingual and can only fluently speak in English. “I feel pretty stupid that I don’t know any foreign languages,” Gates admitted in an interview.

How did Bill Gates get rich? He made the majority of his fortune through Microsoft. At some point, he realized he makes more than he could possibly spend and started giving back to people. Something more—in 2010, his wife Melinda and him joined forces with billionaire investor Warren Buffett and founded “Giving Pledge.” This movement encourages other billionaires to donate to the unprivileged too. Needless to say, since the start of the COVID pandemic, the Gates family has pledged billions of dollars for efforts to fight the virus. This has brought a lot of attention to him and sparked countless conspiracy theories. Bill Gates became a millionaire in 1981 at the age of 26, thanks to Microsoft’s IPO. In 1987, at the age of 31, he became a billionaire. At the time, he was the youngest billionaire ever until Mark Zuckerberg stole that title from him in 2008 when he was just 23.

Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein: This topical book by the well-known journalist and political analyst is also deemed “good” by Gates. The deeply researched book looks into what’s driving Americans’ division into highly partisan political camps. “Reading Why We’re Polarized is like having a conversation with a brilliant, extremely persuasive friend who has read everything and who is armed with scores of studies that he’s able to distill into accessible bites,” claims Amy Chua in Foreign Affairs. Find more information on snapreads.com.