Bill Gates recommends 5 ideas for summer reading

OV Digital Desk
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5 ideas for summer reading

The philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recommended a wide range of books for the reading-enthusiasts He consistently helped to uncover great books to the public by writing reviews of new books and recommending a list during a year.

This time, his recommendation ranges from business to fiction and economics to memoir. Here are the 2021 summer book recommendations:

Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, by Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann. 

This is written by two Wall Street Journal reporters who covered how could a company as big and successful as GE fail? Gates has been looking for the answer to this question and he finds out many of the probable answers which he was seeking. The book covers the history of General Electric’s epic decline.

Lights Out examine how Welch’s handpicked successor, Jeff Immelt, tried to fix flaws in Welch’s profit machine while stumbling headlong into mistakes of his own. In the end, GE’s traditional win-at-all-costs-driven culture seemed to lose its direction, which ultimately caused the company’s decline on both a personal and organizational scale. ​Lights Out details how one of America’s all-time great companies has been reduced to a cautionary tale for our times.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, by Elizabeth Kolbert

The author covered the interrelation between humanity versus nature. She describes it as “a book about people trying to solve problems caused by people trying to solve problems.”

Five Books Bill Gates recommends you to read

A Promised Land, by Barack Obama

It is a memoir of President Barack Obama which covers his early career up through the mission that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. It’s a fascinating look at what it’s like to steer a country through challenging times.

The Overstory, by Richard Powers

The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of the natural world.  Gates finds it an unusual novel. The Overstory follows the lives of nine people and examines their connection with trees. Some of the characters come together over the course of the book, while others stay on their own.

An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives, by Matt Richtel

Richtel wrote his book before the pandemic, but this exploration of the human immune system is nevertheless a valuable read that will help the human to understand what it takes to stop COVID-19. The author kept the subject accessible by focusing on four patients, each of whom is forced to manage their immune system in one way or another. Their stories make for a super interesting look at the science of immunity.

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