Bill Gates shares summer reading list for 2025 featuring Bono, Trevor Noah and more

Bill Gates has shared a summer reading list featuring books he says inspired his recent memoir, Source Code.

The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, 69, published his own book in February, in which he opened up about experimenting with cannabis and LSD and revealed he was sent to therapy as a child.

His new list of memoirs that influenced Source Code includes books by Bono, Trevor Noah, Katharine Graham, Nicholas Kristof and Tara Westover.

Gates writes of Surrender, the memoir by the U2 frontman: “I’m lucky that my parents were super supportive of my interest in computers — but Bono’s parents had a very different view of his passion for singing.

“He says his parents basically ignored him, which made him try even harder to get their attention. ‘The lack of interest of my father... in his son’s voice is not easy to explain, but it might have been crucial.’ Bono shows a lot of vulnerability in this surprisingly open memoir, writing about his’need to be needed’ and how he learned he’ll never fill his emotional needs by playing for huge crowds.”

Bono adapted his memoir into a stage show that was subsequently filmed. The resulting documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender, received a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival last week.

Gates was also full of praise for Born a Crime by the former Daily Show host, which recounts his experiences growing up as a biracial child in apartheid South Africa, at a time when mixed-race relationships were forbidden.

“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,” writes Gates. “He was, as the title says, ‘born a crime.’ In this book, and in his comedy, Trevor uses his outside perspective to his advantage. His outlook transcends borders.”

The other books Gates recommends are Personal History by Katharine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, Chasing Hope by New York Times columnist and journalist Nicholas Kristof and Educated, by Tara Westover, who was raised in a Mormon survivalist home in rural Idaho by parents who believed that doomsday was coming.

“Eventually she broke away from her parents,” writes Gates of the latter. “A process that felt like a much more extreme version of what I went through as a kid, and what I think a lot of people go through.”

Last year, Gates told The Independent that he believes billionaires like himself have been allowed to grow too rich.

“If I designed the tax system, I would be tens of billion dollars poorer than I am,” he said. “The tax system could be more progressive without damaging significantly the incentive to do fantastic things.”