The best books of 2016 according to Bill Gates

String Theory by David Foster Wallace

String Theory has nothing to do with physics, but you will look a lot smarter if you open a book with that name on a train or plane. String Theory is a collection of Wallace's five best essays on tennis. I gave up tennis while working at Microsoft, but one day I became passionate about it again. However, you don't need to know how to play tennis to love this book. The author has the same skill with the pen as Roger Federer has with the tennis racket.

Shoe Salesman by Phil Knight

Nike's co-founder's story is an unusually honest reminder of what the road to business success really looks like: hard, unstable, full of mistakes. I have met Knight several times. He is very disposed to himself, but at the same time quiet. In this book, Knight talks about how leaders tend to act in different situations. I don't think Knight's goal is to teach the reader anything. Instead, he does something better: tells his story as honestly as possible. And this is the main charm of the book.

Genes by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Doctors are called the triple threat: they treat the sick, teach medical students, and do their own research. Mukherjee, who does all of these things at Columbia University, has a fourth personality: he's a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

In his latest book, Mukherjee takes us from the past to the present and the future of genome science, with a focus on ethical issues. They are becoming especially acute due to significant technological advances in genomics. Mukherjee wrote this book for a wide audience because he understands that new technologies in genomics affect everyone and affect our lives.

The Myth of the Strong Leader by Archie Brown

This year's fierce election campaign prompted me to read a 2014 book by an Oxford University scholar who has studied political leadership - the good, the bad, and the ugly - for over 50 years. Brown argues that the leaders who have contributed the most to history are usually not the ones who are called strong leaders. These are people who cooperate, delegate authority, are open to negotiations and recognize that one person cannot have all the answers. Brown couldn't even imagine how his book would resonate in 2016.

The Network, Gretchen Bakke

This book on power grid obsolescence is written in one of my favorite genres, "books about everyday things that are actually fun." Partly “Network” is interesting to me because my first job back at university was writing software for an organization that manages the power grid in the Northwest.

But even if you haven't thought for a moment about how electricity gets to your outlets, this book can convince you that the electrical grid is one of the greatest engineering wonders of the modern world. I think you, too, will want to know why grid upgrades are so difficult and so important to clean energy in the future.