Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates may spend heavily on vaccines and aid programs, but he seems to recognize that the one of the things that money can’t buy is more knowledge.

So each summer (and each holiday season) Gates shares a reading list, which typically introduces some mind-expanding concepts in the guise of beach books. That’s not exactly a secret, even if Gates always acts a little surprised by it. “When I pulled together this list of five that you might enjoy this summer, I realized that several of my choices wrestle with big questions,” he writes on his blog Gates Notes about this summer’s five selections.

In fact, this year he even outlined a few central questions those tomes might help answer. ” What makes a genius tick? Why do bad things happen to good people? Where does humanity come from, and where are we headed?”

The books on the following list appear to address each query in order. There’s a biography about Leonardo da Vinci, a memoir from a woman battling cancer, a fictional account of one night in the life of Abraham Lincoln narrated by ghosts, and even an explainer about how life itself happened, and continues to progress.

By the numbers, that’s only four topics. So think of the fifth book as more of a call to action. It’s written by a global health expert who passed away last year, and circles back to several lessons that relate more directly to how everyone might be able to do more good in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson



One of the world’s most revered painters and thinkers was largely self-taught and didn’t let the technological restrictions of 500 years ago limit his conjectures about how the world around him might work. “When he wanted to understand something–whether it was the flow of blood through the heart or the shape of a woodpecker’s tongue–he would observe it closely, scribble down his thoughts, and then try to figure it all out,” Gates writes. And curiosity–especially in the online era–may be more valuable than ever.

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved, by Kate Bowler