While compiling books for his annual summer recommendations, Bill Gates realized that the topics in his list were hardly the “stuff of beach reads.”
At the top of that list is “How the World Really Works” by Vaclav Smil, Gates’ favorite author. The book focuses on the intricacies of industry and innovation.
“If you want a brief but thorough education in numeric thinking about many of the fundamental forces that shape human life, this is the book to read,” Gates wrote in a blog post.
The Microsoft co-founder — who owns the most private farmland in the U.S. and also authored a book on climate change — highlights Smil’s chapters on food production and energy in his review of the book.
The other books in the list cover gender equality, political polarization, climate change and coming of age.
“Each of the writers — three novelists, a journalist, and a scientist — was able to take a meaty subject and make it compelling without sacrificing any complexity,” he wrote about this summer’s list.
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.”
“The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson
This climate fiction novel imagines — in excruciating detail — various scenes of disasters caused by the climate crisis. It also explores some theoretical solutions. “Robinson has written a novel that presents the urgency of this crisis in an original way and leaves readers with hope that we can do something about it,” Gates writes.
In this sci-fi world, women have the ability to discharge electric shocks with their bodies, and the writer uses this plot line to explore gender-related power dynamics. Gates writes, “Reading about female characters who have been suffering with no recourse and suddenly have the power to defend themselves, I gained a stronger and more visceral sense of the abuse and injustice many women experience today.”
