If you are looking for a good book to read or give this holiday season, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has it for you.
Gates released on Tuesday, his holiday reading list, including four recommendations for what to read at the end of the yr. While Gates says he didn’t select these books with a specific theme in mind, he admits that every one four have something in common: making sense of the world and higher understanding it.
“It’s natural that in the times of rapid change we are experiencing, we try to focus on everything” – Gates he wrote.
Bill Gates. Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Gates ceaselessly publishes book recommendations, including from last summer and holiday book lists.
Gates was a co-founder of Microsoft in 1975 and is currently value $165 billion in response to estimates Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Here are his suggestions for the 2024 holidays.
A restless generation
“A restless generation“, a 400-page New York Times bestseller written by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, traces the decline in mental health among today’s youth back to the childhood phone use that became the norm in the 2010s. The book also offers solutions for parents, teachers and governments.
“It’s a bit of a scary book, but it’s very compelling,” Gates said in “A video announcementadding that Haidt, unlike some authors, “actually has some prescriptions, such as children stopping using phones much later and differences in parenting style.”
An unfinished love story
“An unfinished love storyDoris 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 for President Lyndon B. Johnson and helped design Johnson’s design Great social program in the 1960s, a set of policies aimed at ending poverty.
“It’s Lyndon Johnson’s story, but I discovered the book surprisingly timely,” Gates said in the video. He characterized the 1960s as “form of a crazy time” and that Goodwin “gets the picture pretty good.”
The coming wave
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman “The coming wave“ is a 352-page analysis of how artificial intelligence could 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 artificial intelligence. Microsoft itself overpaid over $13 billion for example to OpenAI.
“Of all the books about artificial intelligence, this is the one I recommend the most,” Gates said in the video.
Engineering in sight
Engineering in sight is a 264-page illustrated guide written by Grady Hillhouse, the YouTuber behind the channel Practical engineeringwhich has over four million subscribers. The book explains how on a regular basis technology works, from mobile phone towers to bridges, in a visual and easy-to-understand way.
“The environment we live in, there is an electric grid, there is a water grid, there is a cable television network, there is a cell phone network, natural gas is distributed to homes and all of this is wonderful stuff,” Gates said in the video. “You can just ignore it, or I think it’s cool to understand.”