Bill Gates Your Summer Reading List Should Include These 5 Books
Summer is a great time to escape to the beach, to the mountains, or to the world of a great book. This year, I found myself drawn even more than usual to books that took me outside and I don't mean the great outdoors. The books on this year's summer reading list pushed me out of my own experiences, and I learned some things that made me question my own thinking about how the world works. Some of these books helped me better understand what it's like to grow up outside the mainstream as a child of mixed race in apartheid South Africa, as a young man trying to escape his impoverished life in rural Appalachia, or as the son of a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia. I hope you'll find that others make you think deeper about what it means to truly connect with other people and to have purpose in your life. And all of them will transport you somewhere else  whether you're sitting on a beach towel or on your own couch. , A Full Life, by Jimmy Carter. Even though the former President has already written more than two dozen books, he somehow managed to save some great anecdotes for this quick, condensed tour of his fascinating life. I loved reading about Carter's improbable rise to the world's highest office. The book will help you understand how growing up in rural Georgia in a house without running water, electricity, or insulation shaped  for better and for worse  his time in the White House. Although most of the stories come from previous decades, A Full Life feels timely in an era when the public's confidence in national political figures and institutions is low.