Bill Gates has unveiled a list of his favorite books that he read in 2014.
Some of the titles were not published this year because “sometimes I fall behind and don’t get to a book until well after it’s been published.” Gates’ five picks include Business Adventures by John Brooks, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, How Asia Works by Joe Studwell, The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion, and Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil.
Here’s an excerpt from Gates’ blog post: “I didn’t really plan it this way. But as I look at the list of the best books I read this year, I see how a number of them touch on economics and business. That’s fitting, in a year when Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century put a big spotlight on inequality. In addition, with the Asian economies so much in the news, I wanted to read How Asia Works, which promised to explain why some of the continent’s countries grew so fast while others languished. And I got to brush up on an old favorite, the best business book I’ve ever read.”