Aaron
Hicklin of the excellent website One Grand Books recently asked Bill
Gates what books he want if marooned on
a desert island.
Gates
didn't fully accept the premise, but did provide a list
of books that he's reading, which would
therefore be with him, de-facto, were he suddenly marooned.
I've
published Gates's book
lists in the past and have found his choices
to be often wistful and idiosyncratic.
Apparently
Gates has gotten into a more serious mood, because his current list (minus two
novels) is very much concerned what's happening in the world today:
BUSINESS
1. Business Adventures
Subtitle:
Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
Author:
John Brooks
5
Second Summary: A set of classic case studies about the machinations and
volatile nature of the world of finance, each representative of how human
nature affects decision-making regardless of when those decisions are made.
Best
Quote: The stock market-the daytime adventure serial of the well to do-would
not be the stock market if it did not have its ups and downs. Any board-room
sitter with a taste for Wall Street lore has heard of the retort that JP Morgan
the Elder is supposed made to a naïve acquaintance who ventured to ask
the great man what the market was going to do. "It will
fluctuate," replied Morgan dryly. And it has many other distinctive
characteristics. Apart from the economic advantages and disadvantages of stock
exchanges-the advantage that they provide a free flow capital to finance
industrial expansion, for instance, and the disadvantage that they provide an
all too convenient way for the unlucky, the imprudent, and the gullible to lose
their money-their development has created a whole pattern of social behavior,
complete with customs, language, and predictable responses to given
events."
2. The Power to Compete
Subtitle:
An Economist and an Entrepreneur on Revitalizing Japan in the Global Economy
Author:
Hiroshi Mikitani and Ryoichi Mikitani
5
Second Summary: Argues that Japan's tendency to shun international frameworks
and hide from global realities is the root cause of Japan's seemingly endless
economic stagnation and analyzes current efforts underway to enhance Japan's
competitiveness.
Best
Quote: "Japanese companies are responsible for the current state of
affairs, the biggest reason behind these developments is the inadequacy of
their managers. If Japanese companies work to appoint the best people
available-people who have accumulated a variety of experiences on the global
stage-then they would be able to raise their competitiveness. In reality, however,
under the lifetime employment system, homegrown employees are promoted to
managerial positions based on age rather than skill or global experience."
PUBLIC
POLICY
3. Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
Author:
David JC MacKay
5
Second Summary: Analyzes the relevant numbers on sustainable energy and
organizes a plan for change on both a personal level and an international
scale, while answering questions surrounding nuclear energy, the potential of
sustainable fossil fuels, and the possibilities of sharing renewable power with
foreign countries.
Best
Quote: "Where numbers are used, their meaning is often obfuscated by
enormousness. Numbers are chosen to impress, to score points and arguments,
rather than to inform. 'Los Angeles residents drive 142 million miles-the
distance from Earth to Mars-every single day.' 'Each year, 27 million acres of
tropical rain forest are destroyed.' '14 billion pounds of trash are dumped
into the sea every year.' 'British people throw away 2.6 billion slices of
bread per year.' 'The waste paper buried each year in the UK could fill 103,448
double-decker buses.' The result of this lack of meaningful members and facts?
We are inundated with a flood of crazy innumerate codswallop. The BBC dulls out
advice on how we can do our bit to save the planet. For example: 'Switch off
your mobile phone charger when it's not in use.' If anyone objects that mobile
phone chargers are not actually our number one form of energy consumption, the
mantra 'every little bit helps' is wheeled out. Every little bit helps? A
more realistic mantra is 'if everyone does a little, we'll achieve only a
little.'"
4. The Better Angels of Our Nature
Subtitle:
Why Violence Has Declined
Author:
Steven Pinker
5
Second Summary: Through an exploration of the essence of human nature and an
examination of psychology and history, this book shows that despite the
ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in
decline over long stretches of history.
Best
Quote: "For all the dangers we face today, the dangers of yesterday were
even worse. Readers of this book (and as we shall see, people in most of the
rest of the world) no longer have to worry about abduction into sexual slavery,
divinely commanded genocide, lethal circuses and tournaments, punishment on the
cross, rack, wheel, stake, or strappado for holding unpopular beliefs,
decapitation for not bearing a son, disembowelment for having dated a royal,
pistol duels to defend their honor, beachside fisticuffs to impress their
girlfriends, and the prospect of a nuclear world war that would put an end to
civilization or to human life itself."
SCIENCE
5. Sapiens
Subtitle:
A Brief History of Humankind
Author:
Yuval Noah Harari
5
Second Summary: Integrates history and science to reconsider accepted
narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine
specific events within the context of human evolution and our recently-acquired
ability to bend laws of natural selection.
Best
Quote: "Despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing,
we remain unsure of our goals and we seem to be as discontented as ever. We
have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles--but
nobody knows where we're going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have
very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be
more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to
keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking
havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little
more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction. Is
there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who
don't know what they want?"
6. The Vital Question
Subtitle:
Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
Author:
Nick Lane
5
Second Summary: Draws on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and
cell biology to deliver a compelling account of evolution from the very origins
of life to the emergence of multicellular organisms, while offering deep
insights into our own lives.
Best
Quote: "We do not know why life is the way it is. All complex life on
earth shares a common ancestor, a cell that arose from simple bacterial
progenitors on just one occasion in 4 billion years. Was this a freak accident,
or did other 'experiments' in the evolution of complexity fail? We don't know.
We do know at this common ancestor was already a very complex cell. It had more
or less the same sophistication as one of your cells, and passed this great
complexity on not just to you and me but to all its descendants, from trees to
bees."
PERSONAL
DEVELOPMENT
7. How Not to Be Wrong
Subtitle:
The Power of Mathematical Thinking
Author:
Jordan Ellenberg
5
Second Summary: Shows how to apply mathematical analysis to a wide range of
sitautions, including baseball, Reaganomics, lotteries, psychology, painting,
artificial languages, non-Euclidean geometry, slime molds, Facebook and the
existence of God.
Best Quote:
"You probably already are doing math, even if you don't call it that. Math
is woven into the way we reason. And math makes you better at things.
Knowing mathematics is like wearing a pair of X-ray specs reveal hidden
structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of the world. Math is a
science of not being wrong about things, its techniques and habits hammered out
by centuries of hard work and argument. With the tools of mathematics in hand,
you can understand the world in a deeper, sounder and more meaningful
way."
8. Parenting with Love and Logic
Author:
Foster Cline and Jim Fay
5
Second Summary: Shows how to raise self-confident, motivated children who are
ready for the real world and how to parent effectively and teach responsibility
without anger, threats, nagging, or power struggles.
Best
Quote: "Parents send messages to their children about what they think
their kids are capable of. Message the helicopter parent sends is, ' you are
fragile and can't make it without me.' The drill sergeant's message is, '
you can't think for yourself so I'll do it for you.' While both of these
parental types may successfully control their children in the early years, they
will have done their kids a disservice once puberty is reached. Helicopter children
become adolescents unable to cope with outside forces, think for themselves, or
handle their own problems. Drill sergeant kids, who did a lot of saluting when
they were young, will do a lot of saluting with teenagers, but the salute is
different: a raised fist or a crude gesture involving the middle finger."
BY GEOFFREY
JAMES
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/8-books-bill-gates-wants-you-to-read-this-summer.html?cid=em01014week22a
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