什么书能让超级大脑，亿万富翁比尔盖茨爱不择手，读至深夜仍意犹未尽？
什么书能激发他的创造性思维，再燃科幻的奇想？
今夏比尔盖茨一推荐，这五本书就红遍全球。
喜欢原汁原味的人可以直接在这读比尔盖茨的推荐文，喜欢读中文的人可以读我的翻译。
今夏推荐五本书
比尔盖茨 5/17/2016
经历了九个月风雨，西雅图终于迎来了夏季。天空晴朗，几乎没有任何湿度而且夜晚很凉爽。最重要的是，你有时可以坐在外面读一本好书。
今年夏天，我推荐阅读清单中的书籍都含有相当分量的科学和数学。但是在我选择的过程中并没有用任何科学或数学。下面的五本书只是我喜欢，激发我用新的方式去思考，让我爱不择手读至深夜。其结果是，这五本书单包括了从800页的由一个当地的传奇作家写的科幻小说到200页的关于日本怎么重获它的经济魔力的非小说类书籍。今年夏天，当你有些可以自己支配的空闲时间，我希望你能从中找到至少一本书让你能超越现状。
Seveneves，by Neal Stephenson。在朋友向我推荐这本书之前，我已经有十年没有看过任何科幻小说了。我很感谢她的推荐。开门见山，小说的第一句话，月球炸毁了。当人们知道未来的两年灾难性的流星雨将消灭地球上所有生命时，人类团结一致，为了生存，推出了尽可能多的航天器以便带所有的人逃离地球。你可能会失去耐心去读住在西雅图的斯蒂芬森关于太空飞船的描述，但我喜欢其中的技术细节，显然作者对宇宙飞船有很深的研究。 Seveneves重新激发了我对科幻的兴趣。
How Not to be Wrong，by Jordan Ellenberg。 Ellenberg，数学家和作家，解释了数学如何在我们的日常生活中甚至在不经意的时候发挥作用的。书中的每一章都以似乎相当简单课题开头，比如政治选举，说话，或马萨诸塞州彩票，然后以此为起点谈论所涉及的数学。在一些地方，数学变得相当复杂，但他始终确保仍然能让你跟上他的思维。这本书的更大的要点是，正像Ellenberg自己写道， “做数学就是这样的，火一样的激情运算却要被理性所制约。” – 正因为如此，我们每时每刻，都在做数学。
The Vital Question，by Nick Lane。 Nick是那些原创思想家之一。这些人的想法总使你感到应该让更多的人知道他们的工作。他试图通过让人们充分领略能源在所有的生命中扮演的角色去纠正一个错误的科学。他认为，我们可能理解生命是如何开始，如何活的东西变得如此复杂，却不了解能量在其中是如何发挥作用的。这不仅仅是理论上的关于为什么线粒体（电厂在我们的细胞）能起到抗癌和营养不良的作用。即使尼克论证的细节被证明是错误的，我认为他对能量的研究将对我们来自哪里的解释作出重要贡献。
The Power to Compete，Ryoichi Mikitani and Hiroshi Mikitani。我对日本情有独钟，这还要追溯到大约三十年前，当我第一次为微软前往那里。当然了，现在所有对全球经济感兴趣的人都会对日本特别关注。为什么它的企业，在上世纪80年代会在与韩国和中国竞争中黯然失色哪？而且他们能回来吗？这是Ryoichi Mikitani，2013年去世的经济学家和他的儿子Hiroshi，互联网公司乐天的创始人之间的一系列对话的核心。虽然我不完全同意Hiroshi的所有程序，但我觉得他有很多好的想法。抗衡的威力在于明智地展望一个迷人的国家的未来。
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Noah Yuval Harari。因为梅琳达和我都读了这本书，所以在吃饭时我们常常围绕着这本书交谈。哈拉里挑战自己：只用了400页就讲述了人类的整个历史。他还写到了我们今天的物种，以及如何人工智能，基因工程等技术将改变我们的未来。虽然我发现有些观点我和他不同，尤其是他关于人类从最初就不应该耕种的说法，但我会推荐Sapiens给所有对我们这个物种历史和未来感兴趣的人。
5 Books to Read This Summer
By Bill Gates
| May 17, 2016
Here in Seattle, summer is a gift you earn by gutting out nine months of rain and gloom. The skies are clear, there’s hardly any humidity, and the nights are cool. Best of all, you sometimes get the chance to sit outside reading a great book.
This summer, my recommended reading list has a good dose of books with science and math at their core. But there’s no science or math to my selection process. The following five books are simply ones that I loved, made me think in new ways, and kept me up reading long past when I should have gone to sleep. As a result, this is an eclectic list—from an 800-page science fiction novel by a local legend to a 200-page nonfiction book on how Japan can get its economic mojo back. I hope you find at least one book here that inspires you to go off the beaten path when you get some time to yourself this summer.
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson. I hadn’t read any science fiction for a decade when a friend recommended this novel. I’m glad she did. The plot gets going in the first sentence, when the moon blows up. People figure out that in two years a cataclysmic meteor shower will wipe out all life on Earth, so the world unites on a plan to keep humanity going by launching as many spacecraft as possible into orbit. You might lose patience with all the information you’ll get about space flight—Stephenson, who lives in Seattle, has clearly done his research—but I loved the technical details. Seveneves inspired me to rekindle my sci-fi habit.
How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg. Ellenberg, a mathematician and writer, explains how math plays into our daily lives without our even knowing it. Each chapter starts with a subject that seems fairly straightforward—electoral politics, say, or the Massachusetts lottery—and then uses it as a jumping-off point to talk about the math involved. In some places the math gets quite complicated, but he always wraps things up by making sure you’re still with him. The book’s larger point is that, as Ellenberg writes, “to do mathematics is to be, at once, touched by fire and bound by reason”—and that there are ways in which we’re all doing math, all the time.
The Vital Question, by Nick Lane. Nick is one of those original thinkers who makes you say: More people should know about this guy’s work. He is trying to right a scientific wrong by getting people to fully appreciate the role that energy plays in all living things. He argues that we can only understand how life began, and how living things got so complex, by understanding how energy works. It’s not just theoretical; mitochondria (the power plants in our cells) could play a role in fighting cancer and malnutrition. Even if the details of Nick’s work turn out to be wrong, I suspect his focus on energy will be seen as an important contribution to our understanding of where we come from.
The Power to Compete, by Ryoichi Mikitani and Hiroshi Mikitani. I have a soft spot for Japan that dates back three decades or so, when I first traveled there for Microsoft. Today, of course, Japan is intensely interesting to anyone who follows global economics. Why were its companies—the juggernauts of the 1980s—eclipsed by competitors in South Korea and China? And can they come back? Those questions are at the heart of this series of dialogues between Ryoichi, an economist who died in 2013, and his son Hiroshi, founder of the Internet company Rakuten. Although I don’t agree with everything in Hiroshi’s program, I think he has a number of good ideas. The Power to Compete is a smart look at the future of a fascinating country.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Noah Yuval Harari. Both Melinda and I read this one, and it has sparked lots of great conversations at our dinner table. Harari takes on a daunting challenge: to tell the entire history of the human race in just 400 pages. He also writes about our species today and how artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and other technologies will change us in the future. Although I found things to disagree with—especially Harari’s claim that humans were better off before we started farming—I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species
