Bill Gates’ favorite books of 2014 are the smart gifts for the holidays

watch out Bill Gates — in Lego conformation no less!—tell you abouthis favorite volume of 2014,an immaculate list that has a piddling bit of everything for everyone . I ’ve included all his recommendations and light review below so you’re able to easily grease one’s palms any of them ( I recommend get all of them for yourself too . Good stuff . )

[ The Rosie Effect , by Graeme Simsion]is the uproarious follow - up to The Rosie Project , one of the effective novels I ’ve read in age . There ’s no sophomore slack here . Simsion brings back some of the best characters and gags from the first novel while also bringing in enough raw elements to keep it fresh . It ’s a funny novel that also made me think about relationship : what makes them play and how we have to keep investing time and energy to make them better . A gratifying , entertaining , and thought - provoking book .

Business Adventures , by John Brooks . Shortly after we meet , Warren Buffett loaned me this collection of New Yorker business articles from the fifties and 1960s . I get laid them as much as he did . Brooks ’s insights about business have aged beautifully , and they are as true today as ever . I still go back to this account book from time to fourth dimension , and this year I had a chance to re - understand the chapter on Xerox ( which you candownload devoid ) . Business Adventures is a neglected classic , and it ’s still my preferent occupation book ever .

Das Kapital in the Twenty - First Century , by Thomas Piketty . Capital sparked a wonderful global discussion this year about inequality . Piketty kindly spend an hour discussing his study with me before I finished my review . As I told him , although I have concerns about some of his secondary points and policy prescription medicine , I agree with his most important conclusions : inequality is a growing trouble and that government should flirt a role in thin it . I admire his oeuvre and hope it draws in more impudent people to study the causes of , and cures for , inequality .

How Asia Works , by Joe Studwell . Studwell bring out compelling response to two of the greatest questions in development economics : How did countries like Japan , Taiwan , South Korea , and China achieve sustained , gamy growth ? And why have so few other commonwealth managed to do so ? His answers come in in the form of a round-eyed — and yet hard to execute — pattern : ( 1 ) create conditions for minuscule farmer to thrive , ( 2 ) use the proceeds from agricultural surpluses to build a manufacturing base focalise on export , and ( 3 ) rear both these sectors with financial institution close see to it by the government . The farming section of the book was particularly insightful . It ply ample food for thinking for me as well as the whole Agriculture team at our foundation . And it left us thinking about whether persona of the Asian model can practice in Africa .

make the Modern World : Materials and Dematerialization , by Vaclav Smil . One of Smil ’s book makes my list of favorites pretty much every twelvemonth . This prison term it ’s his smell at the world ’s function of materials , from atomic number 14 to Grant Wood to charge plate and cement . If anyone seek to tell you we ’re using fewer fabric , post him this account book . With his usual skepticism and his love of data , Smil shows how our ability to make things with less material — say , soda cans that need less atomic number 13 — name them gaudy , which actually encourages more production . We ’re using more poppycock than ever .

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