Bill Gates’ summer reading list this year is all about memoirs

Bill Gates is on a memoir kick this summer after publishing his own in February.

The 69-year-old dropped his annual summer reading list on Saturday, and this year’s entries were five books that Gates said helped shape his memoir, “Source Code.”

“Memoirs are a good reminder that people have countless interesting stories to tell about their lives,” Gates said in a blog post.

“Source Code” recounts stories from Gates’ early life leading up to the founding of Microsoft. He writes about how he fell in love with computing, how he got into Harvard, and his first time doing acid.

In his blog post, he wrote that there’s no “direct correlation” between his memoir and those on the list. However, he said there are similar themes.

Last year, his summer reading list was a mix of fiction and nonfiction, with novels about Army nurses and secret agents. His 2025 authors include good friends and a rockstar.

“Memoirs are a good reminder that people have countless interesting stories to tell about their lives,” Gates wrote.

Here are the memoirs he recommends for summer 2025.

“Chasing Hope” by Nicholas Kristof

Gates said he’s been following the work of Nicholas Kristof since 1997, when the veteran journalist published an article about children in poor countries dying from diarrhea. It changed the course of his life and helped him shape the Gates Foundation, Gates wrote in his blog post.

“In this terrific memoir, Nick writes about how he stays optimistic about the world despite everything he’s seen,” Gates wrote. “The world would be better off with more Nick Kristofs.”

“Chasing Hope” came out in 2024 — after Gates finished writing his own memoir. However, Gates said he felt he had to include it on the list.

“Personal History” by Katharine Graham

Gates said he met renowned newspaper publisher Katharine Graham in 1991 on the same day he met Warren Buffett. Kay, as Gates affectionately called her, is best known for presiding over her family’s paper, The Washington Post, during Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

“I loved hearing Kay talk about her remarkable life: taking over the Post at a time when few women were in leadership positions like that, standing up to President Nixon to protect the paper’s reporting on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, negotiating the end to a pressman’s strike, and much more,” Gates said.

“Educated” by Tara Westover

Tara Westover’s “Educated” debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list after its 2018 release. The tale of her upbringing, which included an unconventional father who banned her family from going to hospitals or attending school, led Gates to leave a 5-star review on Goodreads the same year it came out.

Westover taught herself math and self-studied for the ACT despite not setting foot in a classroom until she was 17. Today, she has a Ph.D. in history.

“I thought I was pretty good at teaching myself — until I read Tara Westover’s memoir ‘Educated.’ Her ability to learn on her own blows mine right out of the water,” Gates said in his review.

“Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah

Comedian Trevor Noah released “Born a Crime,” a memoir about his childhood in South Africa, in 2016. As a biracial boy growing up during apartheid, Noah was the product of an illegal interracial relationship and struggled to fit in. Gates said he related to the feeling of being an outsider.

“I also grew up feeling like I didn’t quite fit in at times, although Trevor has a much stronger claim to the phrase than I do,” he wrote in his blog post.

“Surrender” by Bono

Gates shouted out the vulnerability in “Surrender” by musician Paul David Hewson, better known as U2 frontman Bono. The full title, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” sums up the 40-chapter autobiography that has each chapter named after a U2 song.

According to Gates, Bono opens up about his upbringing with parents who “basically ignored” his passion for singing, which only made him try harder to make it as a musician.

“I went into this book knowing almost nothing about his anger at his father, the band’s near-breakups, and his discovery that his cousin was actually his half-brother,” Gates said.

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