If you're looking for a good book to read or gift this holiday season, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has you covered.
gates releasing his holiday reading list on Tuesday, with four recommendations for what to read as the year draws to a close. Although Gates says he didn't choose these books with a specific theme in mind, he admits that all four have something in common: understanding the world and understanding it a little better.
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“It's only natural to try to wrap your head around things during the times of rapid change we're living in now,” Gates has written.
Bill Gates. Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Gates often releases book recommendations, including the past WINE AND holiday book lists.
Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and is currently worth $165 billion, for Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Here are his picks for the 2024 holiday season.
The Anxiety Generation
“The Anxiety Generation“, a 400-page New York Times bestseller by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, traces the decline of the mental health of today's youth to a phone-based childhood that 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 compelling,” Gates said in one video announcementadding that Haidt, unlike some authors, “actually has some prescriptions, like kids not using phones until much later, and changes in parenting style.”
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 The Great Society Program in the 1960s, a set of policies aimed at ending poverty.
“It's a story about Lyndon Johnson, but I found the book surprisingly at the right time,” Gates said in the video. He characterized the sixties as “kind of a crazy time” and that Goodwin, “paints the picture pretty well”.
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The Coming Wave
CEO of Microsoft AI Mustafa SulejmanThe Coming Wave” is a 352-page exploration of how artificial intelligence is poised to transform industries and the way the world works. Suleiman 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 dollars in OpenAI, for example.
Related: Microsoft AI CEO says almost all content online is fair game for AI training
“Of all the books on AI, this is the one I recommend the most,” Gates said 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 Engineeringwhich has over four million subscribers. The book demystifies how everyday technology works, from cell towers to bridges, in a visual and easy-to-understand way.
“The environment that we live in, there's an electric grid, there's a water grid, there's a cable television network, there's a cell phone network, there's natural gas that's delivered to homes, and it's all wonderful things,” Gates said in the video. “You can just ignore it or I think it's something fun to figure out.”