The Investor's Shelf — one person
Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft; co-chair of the Gates Foundation
6 biographies about them · 307 books they recommend
Biographies about them 6
Two 1990s biographies cover the Microsoft years; the recent literature is about the foundation and the philanthropy critique.
James Wallace, Jim Erickson · 1992 · Unauthorised; the standard account of the early years.
Stephen Manes, Paul Andrews · 1993 · The more thorough of the two 1990s biographies.
Anupreeta Das · 2024 · First full modern biography, covering the post-Microsoft reinvention.
Linsey McGoey · 2015 · Academic critique of Gates Foundation philanthrocapitalism.
Tim Schwab · 2023 · Investigative case against the foundation's power.
Jennifer Edstrom, Marlin Eller · 1998 · Insider account by a long-serving Microsoft developer.
Books they recommend 307
Gates's reading list grew out of his GatesNotes blog, where he has written hundreds of book reviews since 2010. The list reflects a consistent preoccupation: understanding how things actually work, at scale, over time. He is drawn to books that demolish comfortable assumptions with evidence — Pinker's case that violence has declined, Rosling's insistence that global health has improved more than we realize, Kolbert's documentation of what we are losing. A second thread runs through the public health and medicine titles; the history titles share a common question: why do some societies, institutions, or technologies succeed when others don't? Finally, two books are about the future of energy and climate.
All book reviews — Gates Notes 155
Biography and Memoir 21
Peter Adamson, Carol Bellamy, Kul Gautam, Richard Jolly, Nyi Nyi, Mary Racelis, Richard Reid, Jon Rohde · not in an entry yet
Fiction 18
Medicine and Biology 15
Science 14
General History 12
Economics 11
Environment and Energy 11
Julian Allwood, Jonathan Cullen · not in an entry yet
Education and Learning 11
Sociology and Culture 7
Technology and Computing 6
Psychology and Behaviour 5
Mathematics and Statistics 3
Politics and Government 3
Food 3
Artificial Intelligence 3
Financial History 2
Religion and Spirituality 2
Health and Fitness 1
Business and Management 1
Company Histories 1
Philosophy 1
Art and Design 1
Leadership 1
Entrepreneurship and Startups 1
Not yet given a topic 1
Book recommendations listed on their Good Books profile 111
Environment and Energy 16
Medicine and Biology 14
Biography and Memoir 11
Fiction 10
Science 9
Richard P. Feynman · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Richard P. Feynman · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Richard P. Feynman · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Business and Management 5
General History 4
Technology and Computing 4
Economics 4
Bjørn Lomborg · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Politics and Government 4
Robert Jervis · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Biography of Scientists 3
Entrepreneurship and Startups 3
Financial History 3
Sport 3
Education and Learning 3
Psychology and Behaviour 2
Sociology and Culture 2
Artificial Intelligence 2
Jeff Hawkins · not in an entry yet aggregator only
Decision Making 1
Investing 1
Mathematics and Statistics 1
Leadership 1
War and Strategy 1
Food 1
Games and Puzzles 1
Philosophy 1
Parenting and Family 1
Superbook reading list 15
General History 4
Steven Pinker
“Gates reviewed this at length on GatesNotes and has called it the most important book he has ever read. Pinker's argument—that violence has fallen dramatically across human history—runs counter to most people's intuition, and Gates finds the data-dense approach exactly right for a question that matters this much.”
Steven Pinker
“Gates wrote the foreword to this Pinker follow-up and described it as his new favorite book at the time of publication. It extends the violence argument into a broader case for reason, science, and humanism as drivers of measurable human improvement.”
Yuval Noah Harari · not in an entry yet
“One of Gates's most frequently cited titles in his annual lists and GatesNotes reviews. He praised Harari's ability to synthesize 70,000 years of human history into a coherent argument about what makes our species unusual, while disagreeing with some of the conclusions—which he considers a feature, not a bug.”
Jared Diamond
“Gates has recommended Jared Diamond's account of why Eurasian civilizations came to dominate others multiple times over the years. The book's geographic and ecological framework for historical inequality informs how the Foundation thinks about why some countries remain poor despite significant aid.”
Not yet given a topic 4
Yuval Noah Harari · not in an entry yet
“Gates reviewed the Harari follow-up on GatesNotes and called it thought-provoking even where he found it speculative. Reading Sapiens and Homo Deus together tracks Harari's move from chronicling what happened to projecting what comes next, and Gates finds the tension between the two books more interesting than either alone.”
Siddhartha Mukherjee · not in an entry yet
“Gates called this biography of cancer one of the best books he had read that year. Mukherjee's combination of clinical history, molecular biology, and patient narrative matches the way the Gates Foundation thinks about disease: root causes, systems, and the human beings inside them.”
Elizabeth Kolbert · not in an entry yet
“Gates reviewed Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer-winning account of the ongoing mass extinction on GatesNotes shortly after publication and called it among the most important books on the environment he had read. He praised its combination of reportage and science and its refusal to soften the findings.”
Hans Rosling · not in an entry yet
“Gates co-wrote the foreword with Melinda Gates and Bill Gates Jr. and has said he wishes every leader in public health and development policy would read it. Rosling's ten instincts that distort our picture of the world map directly onto errors the Foundation encounters constantly in how donors, journalists, and governments talk about global poverty.”
Business and Management 1
John Brooks · not in an entry yet
“Gates has called this his all-time favorite business book. Warren Buffett mailed him his personal copy in 1991. The twelve Wall Street stories from the 1960s hold up not as business history but as studies in how people behave under pressure and uncertainty.”
Technology and Computing 1
Walter Isaacson · not in an entry yet
“Gates reviewed Walter Isaacson's history of computing pioneers on GatesNotes and noted the accuracy of the portraits of people he knew personally. He praised the book's central argument—that collaboration, not lone genius, built the digital age—as a correction to the mythology that surrounds the field.”
Medicine and Biology 1
Atul Gawande · not in an entry yet
“Gates reviewed Gawande's book on aging and end-of-life care on GatesNotes and wrote that it changed how he thought about his own family and about what good medicine actually means. He has since cited it as a model for how doctors and institutions should approach the limits of intervention.”
Biography and Memoir 1
Paul Kalanithi · not in an entry yet
“Recommended in one of Gates's winter reading lists. Kalanithi's memoir—written as he was dying of lung cancer at 36—works differently from the data-driven books Gates usually favors. He described it as a book about meaning in the face of mortality, and one of the most moving things he had read.”
Economics 1
Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson · not in an entry yet
“Gates reviewed this on GatesNotes and called the Acemoglu-Robinson thesis—that inclusive institutions, not geography or culture, determine prosperity—one of the more useful frameworks he has for evaluating development interventions. He disagrees with parts of it, which he documented in the same review.”
Psychology and Behaviour 1
Daniel Kahneman
“Gates has cited Kahneman's exploration of the two systems of human thinking in multiple contexts, including discussions of how the Foundation makes decisions and how policymakers misread risk. He considers it one of the most practically applicable books on psychology he has encountered.”
Environment and Energy 1
Bill Gates
“Gates wrote this after years of reading widely on climate and finding no single book that combined the emissions science, the economics of green premiums, and a sector-by-sector decarbonization roadmap. It appears on his GatesNotes recommended lists as the book he kept wishing existed before he decided to write it himself.”
Five books to read this winter, holiday 2025 list 5
Fiction 1
Environment and Energy 1
Biography and Memoir 1
Sociology and Culture 1
Politics and Government 1
5 of my all-time favorite books, holiday 2022 list 5
Biography and Memoir 2
Fiction 1
Sport 1
Biography of Scientists 1
Must Reads list on the Gates Notes books page 5
Sociology and Culture 1
Science 1
General History 1
Sport 1
Fiction 1
My summer best list for 2026 3
Fiction 1
Financial History 1
Medicine and Biology 1
Gates Notes review of Business Adventures 1
Business and Management 1
John Brooks
“Business Adventures remains the best business book I've ever read.”
Gates Notes review of How Asia Works 1
Economics 1
Joe Studwell
“it's a good read for anyone who wants to understand what actually determines whether a developing economy will succeed.”
Gates Notes review of Mindset 1
Psychology and Behaviour 1
Gates Notes review of Sapiens 1
General History 1
Gates Notes review of Shoe Dog 1
Biography and Memoir 1
Gates Notes review of SuperFreakonomics 1
Economics 1
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
“I recommend this book to anyone who reads nonfiction. It is very well written and full of great insights.”
Gates Notes review of Tap Dancing to Work 1
Investing 1
Carol J. Loomis
“I hope many people, even those who think they know Warren well, will read it cover to cover.”
Gates Notes review of The Road to Character 1
Philosophy 1
David Brooks · not in an entry yet
“It certainly was a stimulating read, and it got me thinking about my own motivations and limitations in new ways.”