You're likely still thumbing through the books on our summer reading list, so forgive Bill Gates for piling on. The Microsoft founder and noted philanthropist has shared a list of the six "beach reads" he's hoping you'll tackle this year and even though few of these seem particularly beachy to us, there's some decent fodder here for your next reading challenge, whenever that may be.

On Immunity, by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press)

Gates hopes you'll read this non-fiction title, one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 best books of 2014, for taking on the anti-vaccine mob. It also pertains to a cause near and dear to wife Melinda Gates' heart: improving the health of children. Like Melinda, Biss "is not out to demonize anyone who holds opposing views," says Gates, but keen to draw on insights from psychology, sociology, women's studies, and history.

The drawings are crude but expressive, which explains why Gates got hooked on this comic. The young author (Brosh is in her late-20s) shares the kind of things we're too scared to admit, like recollections of dog vomit. "You will rip through it in three hours, tops," Gates gushes in his review. "But you'll wish it went on longer, because it's funny and smart as hell."

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, by Richard Dawkins (Simon & Schuster)

The evolutionary biologist at Oxford has plenty of critics, but Gates isn't one of them. "In science, we're all kids," Gates writes. "A good scientist is somebody who has redeveloped from scratch many times the chain of reasoning of how we know what we know, just to see where there are holes. So it can never hurt to revisit great scientific explanations..."

, by Darrell Huff (W.W. Norton & Company)

First published in 1954, Gates enjoyed this book so much he recommended it to everyone at TED this year. Beware the dated illustrations.

What If?, by Randall Munroe (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)



The questions are funny—"From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?"—but the science underpinning them is very accurate, Gates says. And what thought leader doesn't like thought experiments?

Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequences, by Vaclav Smil (Wiley)

We did not know that Gates went vegetarian for a year. He says that his interest in our "carnivorous ways" was unexpected, as was learning that the more people earn, the more they want to eat meat. He acknowledges that's not necessarily a bad thing—"meat is a great source of high-quality proteins that help children fully develop mentally and physically," Gates notes—but it does raise issues, such as clearing forests for farmland, which "contributes to climate change, as do the greenhouse gasses produced by those animals."

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Jill Krasny Senior Writer Jill Krasny is a senior writer for Esquire where she covers lifestyle, books and general news.

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