Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present, by Cynthia Brown.Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond.Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond.The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, by Jared Diamond.The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert.The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker.Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, by Steven Pinker.The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, by Nick Lane.Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari.Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari.Titan II: A History of a Cold War Missile Program, by David K.A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great, by Ed Rendell.Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, by Ezra Vogel.The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.Being Nixon: A Man Divided, by Evan Thomas.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI FULL
Gates, of course, reads books on scientific topics like biology and physics, but he’s also a big fan of books that offer a scientific or mathematical framework for seeing the world, like What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by xkcd’s Randall Munroe. As the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he is wont to recommend books on development, poverty, disease, and education on his blog.
Gates reads little fiction, as he readily admits, but will dabble in YA, comedic memoir, and graphic novels on occasion. Harari worked closely with renowned comics illustrator Daniel Casanave and co-writer David Vandermeulen to create his latest book, an adaptation of his first bestseller, Sapiens Graphic Novel: Volume 1.We haven’t included books Gates has recommended in interviews but not on his blog, like the two books he thinks are essential to understanding AI: Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom and The Master Algorithm, by Pedro Domingos. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, was a Number One Bestseller and was described by Bill Gates as 'fascinating' and 'crucial'. His follow-up to Sapiens, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow was also a Top Ten Bestseller and was described by the Guardian as 'even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens'. It was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller and was in the Top Ten for over nine months in paperback. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has become an international phenomenon attracting a legion of fans from Bill Gates and Barack Obama to Chris Evans and Jarvis Cocker, and is published in 65 languages worldwide. Prof Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialising in World History.