Top 5 books Bill Gates recommends, to cure lockdown blues

If you are stuck at home this summer looking for ways to distract yourself from the deluge of coronavirus news, Bill Gates has the perfect solution. A voracious reader himself, Gates has recommended these 5 books to dispel lockdown blues. His book recommendations have been listed on his blog GatesNotes. Here are the ones the billionaire philanthropist recommends.

5- "Good Economics for Hard Times" by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
 
This book is written by couple Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Nobel Prize-winning economists at MIT. They together studied the impact of policies like direct cash transfer. They wrote this book to examine the latest research on major issues like immigration, climate change, and inequality. Gates, who was already fond of their first book (Poor Economics), was  impressed by the second too.
"In the end, Good Economics for Hard Times felt to me like a good complement to books that paint intimate portraits of what it's like to grow up poor in America, including Educated, Hillbilly Elegy, and Evicted," Gates writes.

If you are eager to learn about pandemics, this book by John M. Barry would be the right choice to go for. The book is about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
"One of several books that made it clear to me that the world needed to do a better job of preparing for novel pathogens." writes Gates.
 

This book from Disney's former CEO is "a business book I'd actually recommend" says Bill. "In my experience, it is rare to find one that really captures what it's like to build and operate an organization or that has tips you could really put into practice." The book is at number three on Gates' list.

Talking about the book, Bill says, "If you're in the mood for a really compelling tale about the best and worst of humanity, I think you'll find yourself as engrossed in it as I was."
Gates calls this 2004 prize-winning novel a touching and clever story for its original structure. "It explores how self-centered and bad people can be, but also how supportive and good people can be," writes Bill.

The book is a memoir by Edith Eger, who was sent to a death camp at Auschwitz when she was only 16. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list and was also  recommended by none other than Melinda Gates (Bill Gates' wife) herself.