Source Code
Bill Gates's 2025 memoir of childhood, Lakeside, Harvard and the start of Microsoft
The first of three planned memoirs, published in February 2025, covering the author's life from a restless Seattle childhood through the founding of Microsoft in the late 1970s. It dwells on the people who shaped him, including the grandmother who taught him cards, a therapist who talked him out of a war with his parents, and a close friend who died when he was 16, and on the long unbroken hours of reading and programming that became his way of working. Proceeds go to the United Way.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Bill GatesRecommends
Microsoft co-founder · Gates Notes reading lists
His own memoir, covering childhood through the early years of Microsoft. He says writing it was the first time he tried to understand himself through his own history, and that he is giving the proceeds to the United Way.
Source: Gates Notes: My first memoir is now available
Aimed at the same thing
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Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2023 book on vision, work, failure and giving back
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