[imagesource: Bill Gates/GatesNotes]

Bill Gates has had a busy year, throwing himself and his resources into combatting the pandemic.

He’s also spent far too much time sitting in interviews trying to convince people that COVID-19 isn’t a conspiracy and that he has no intention of using a vaccine to plant tracking devices in their brains.

What a time to be alive.

Despite all of this, he still managed to take time out to make an adorable birthday video for his best pal Warren Buffett, and to compile the annual list of his top five favourite books.

As he writes on GatesNotes, this year was a little different to years past:

In tough times—and there’s no doubt that 2020 qualifies as tough times—those of us who love to read turn to all kinds of different books. This year, sometimes I chose to go deeper on a difficult subject, like the injustices that underlie this year’s Black Lives Matter protests.

Other times I needed a change of pace, something lighter at the end of the day. As a result, I read a wide range of books, and a lot of excellent ones.

He’s titled his list ‘Five Good Books for a Lousy Year’.

Here’s the man himself talking you through his picks:

More from Gates in his summaries of the books, below, as well as links for where you can find them.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander.

Gates says that like “many white people”, he’s tried to deepen his understanding of systemic racism in recent months.

Alexander’s book offers an eye-opening look into how the criminal justice system unfairly targets communities of color, and especially Black communities. It’s especially good at explaining the history and the numbers behind mass incarceration.

While he was familiar with some of the data and stats, he says that Alexander really helps to put it in context.

Find it here.

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein.

He started following Epstein’s work after watching his TED Talk on sports performance.

In this fascinating book, he argues that although the world seems to demand more and more specialization—in your career, for example—what we actually need is more people “who start broad and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives while they progress.”

He uses examples from Roger Federer to Charles Darwin to Cold War-era experts on Soviet affairs.

Find it here.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, by Erik Larson.

Gates says that sometimes history books can feel more relevant in contemporary society than “their authors could have imagined”.

That’s the case with this brilliant account of the years 1940 and 1941, when English citizens spent almost every night huddled in basements and Tube stations as Germany tried to bomb them into submission. The fear and anxiety they felt—while much more severe than what we’re experiencing with COVID-19—sounded familiar.

Larson gives one a vivid sense of what life was like over this period.

Find it here.

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre.

Gates says that this book is “every bit as exciting as [his] favourite spy novels”.

This nonfiction account focuses on Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer who became a double agent for the British, and Aldrich Ames, the American turncoat who likely betrayed him. Macintyre’s retelling of their stories comes not only from Western sources (including Gordievsky himself) but also from the Russian perspective.

Sounds like a wild read.

Find it here.

Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine, by Bijal P. Trivedi.

The title makes you want to throw it across the room. We have enough disease and disaster to deal with. However, according to Gates:

This book is truly uplifting. It documents a story of remarkable scientific innovation and how it has improved the lives of almost all cystic fibrosis patients and their families. This story is especially meaningful to me because I know families who’ve benefited from the new medicines described in this book. I suspect we’ll see many more books like this in the coming years, as biomedical miracles emerge from labs at an ever-greater pace.

That does sound uplifting.

Find it here.

Add those to your Christmas list, or just spoil yourself with what Gates thinks is light reading.

“I hope you find something that helps you”, he says, “or the book lover in your life, finish the year on a good note.”

Cheers to that.

[source:gatesnotes]