5 Summer reads for 2020 recommended by Bill Gates

'The Choice' is Dr. Edith Eva Eger's deeply touching and inspiring story of overcoming trauma and embracing life. In 1944, Eger (16) and her family were sent to a death camp in Auschwitz during the Second World War. While her parents were killed, Eger somehow survived unbelievable horrors and post-war she moved to the United States where she became a trauma therapist. This book was recommended to Bill Gates by his wife Melinda. "This book is partly a memoir and partly a guide to processing trauma...Her unique background gives her amazing insight, and I think many people will find comfort right now from her suggestions on how to handle difficult situations," Gates said about the book.

(Photo: Scribner)

David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' is a "touching and clever novel about moral choices". The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2004 and was also adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. "This is the kind of novel you’ll think and talk about for a long time after you finish it. The plot is a bit hard to explain, because it involves six interrelated stories that take place centuries apart (including one I particularly loved about a young American doctor on a sailing ship in the South Pacific in the mid-1800s). But if you’re in the mood for a really compelling tale about the best and worst of humanity, I think you’ll find yourself as engrossed in it as I was," Gates wrote about the book.

(Photo: Sceptre)

"This is one of the best business books I’ve read in several years," Gates said about former Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger's book 'The Ride of a Lifetime'. Iger was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company for 15 years before he retired in 2020. In this book Iger explains what it is like to be the CEO of a company as large as Walt Disney and shares the lessons he learnt in the process. "Whether you’re looking for business insights or just an entertaining read, I think anyone would enjoy his stories about overseeing Disney during one of the most transformative times in its history," Gates writes. He also shared that he has already suggested this book to several of his friends and colleagues, including Satya Nadella.

(Photo: Bantam Press)

"John M. Barry’s 2004 book 'The Great Influenza' has never been more relevant," writes Bill Gates and rightly so! While Barry writes about the Spanish flu and how it
affected thousands of people across the world, his work also reminds that humans are still dealing with similar challenges during COVID-19 as we did roughly a century ago. "We’re living through an unprecedented time right now. But if you’re looking for a historical comparison, the 1918 influenza pandemic is as close as you’re going to get. Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history. Even though 1918 was a very different time from today, The Great Influenza is a good reminder that we’re still dealing with many of the same challenges," Bill Gates wrote about the book. If you want to read and know more about pandemics, then you should definitely add this book to your reading list.

(Photo: Penguin Books)

"Banerjee and Duflo won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences last year, and they’re two of the smartest economists working today. Fortunately for us, they’re also very good at making economics accessible to the average person," Gates said about Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Banerjee and Duflo's second book 'Good Economics for Hard Times' released in 2019, days after which they won the prestigious award. The book focuses on the policy debates especially in wealthy countries; through their expertise in economics, they explain the facts about issues like immigration, inequality, and businesses. "Their newest book takes on inequality and political divisions by focusing on policy debates that are at the forefront in wealthy countries like the United States," Gates wrote. He further said that though this book is about pre-COVID period, it is relevant even today.

(Photo: Juggernaut)