Bill Gates names the best books and lectures of 2023
At the end of the year, Bill Gates usually shares book recommendations on his blog. In 2023, he continued the tradition and talked about 3 books he would recommend to everyone.
The list of recommendations also includes a course of lectures on economics, and a playlist of Christmas music with tracks from different countries to create a festive mood.
- “The Song of the Cell: Exploring Medicine and the New Man, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. A new book by the American oncologist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his popular science book “The King of All Diseases. A Biography of Cancer”. In his new work, he explains how life evolved from single-celled organisms, and how any human disease ultimately boils down to some sort of cellular problem. After reading it, you begin to better understand how diseases and our bodies work.
- “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, by Hannah Ritchie. The eco-activist uses data to prove that the climate is not as close to doomsday scenarios as one might think after all the news. Yes, things are bad now and the climate is worse than it was in the distant past, but there are improvements in almost all parameters. Gates recommends this book to anyone who wants to have balanced conversations about the environment.
- “Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure, by Vaclav Smil. It may seem that we are living in an innovative era of human history, but a Czech-Canadian scientist disagrees. In his new book, he argues that we are now seeing “clear signs of technological stagnation and slowing development.” And although not everyone will agree with his predictions for the future (Gates, for example, disagrees), his excursion into the past and stories about how the inventions of the past helped us reach the current level of development deserve attention.
As for courses, Gates recommends online lectures on economics by Timothy Taylor. The online course consists of 36 lectures and covers the basic concepts of economics. Gates believes that this knowledge will be useful for everyone, whether they have studied economics before or not.
He also recommended the miniseries All That Invisible Light on Netflix. It is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Anthony Dorr. A selection of Christmas music on Spotify completes the list of recommendations. You can listen to the original playlist here.
