Let’s take a look at a few of the best Melinda Gates book recommendations.
Melinda Gates is a well known philanthropist. She is the cofounder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is ranked as one of the most powerful women in the world. She got her start as a product manager at Microsoft.
She has stated that reading is a part of her daily routine. After she wakes up, meditates, stretches, and does yoga, she picks up her current book and gets to reading.
Melinda Gates seems to be an avid reader. Some of you may know the popular fact that her ex-husband, Bill Gates, reads over 50 books a year. I wonder if they spent time reading together?
After looking at her book recommendations, it’s very clear that Melinda Gates loves to read about inspiring, powerful, and great women. If you also love to read about the great women of our time, then Melinda Gates’ book recommendations are up your alley.
Melinda Gates Book Recommendations List
Here is a full list of Melinda Gates’ book recommendations:
- However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy
- Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
- Alpha Girls by Julian Guthrie
- Brotopia by Emily Chang
- Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
- Awakening Joy by James Baraz
- The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy
However Long the Night was written by Aimee Molloy and published in 2014. This book is 272 pages long.
When Melinda Gates recommended the book, she said, “Reinforced my belief that developing communities already have the potential to spark change that will lead to better lives for themselves and their families.”
There is no question that Melinda Gates loves inspiring women, and that is exactly what However Long the Night is about.
This book is a biography of Molly Melching, an American woman who was an exchange student in Senegal. Her experiences there led to her dedicating about four decades of her life to helping the women and girls of Africa.
The story starts during her time at the University of Dakar and continues on her exchange program in Africa. There we learn that she met inspiring people and became an entrepreneur, founding Tostan.
Her program helps young girls not be forced to marry at a young age, gives health and other aid to women in need, and promotes women’s empowerment by helping them run for leadership positions in their communities.
If you also love the stories of inspiring and powerful women then However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy is the book for you.
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles was published in 2012, and is 384 pages long.
When Melinda Gates was asked what book she had reread the most, she replied with, “The book that I’ve read over and over and over again is Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. Towles is a master of language. With each glittering sentence, he makes you feel like you’re living in Manhattan in the 1930s. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet, hilarious book that whisks you away.”
Rules of Civility follows 25 year old Katey Kontent. On New Year’s Eve in 1937, she is at a jazz bar in Greenwich Village when she meets a banker named Tinker Grey. He sits right next to her and this changes the course of her life.
After she meets Tinker Grey, she discovers the high society of New York City. Fortunately for Katey, she has a strong intellect and a wit to match.
She meets many new friends during her time in this social circle including a shy multimillionaire and a widow that she looks up to. She experiences the wealth and prosperity that is the high society of New York’s social scene.
Alpha Girls by Julian Guthrie
Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime is a book written by Julian Guthrie that was published in 2019 and contains 304 pages.
Again, Melinda Gates recommended the book because of strong women saying, “Shows what’s possible for women and girls everywhere by highlighting the stories of groundbreaking women in Silicon Valley.”
Alpha Girls follows four entrepreneurial women that were a part of the venture capital industry in Silicon Valley.
The first is Magdalena Yesil. She came to America from Turkey with under $50 to her name. She then received an electrical engineering degree from Stanford University and used her knowledge to found a company that helped to commercialize internet access. She also helped found the massive company of Salesforce.
The second is Mary Jane Elmore. She came from rural Indiana and also went to Stanford. She worked at the venture capital firm named IVP, and became the first woman to make partner at the firm.
The third is Theresia Gouw. She was a first generation Asian American from a small town who went to Brown University. There she loves to play foosball, but her big achievements were building massive companies like Trulia, Imperva, and the big fish, Facebook.
The fourth is Sonja Hoel. She was from the Southern United States, and was a partner at an investing firm called Menlo Ventures. She invested in many large companies like McAfee, Hotmail, and F5 Networks. She then was inspired to found an all-women’s investment firm and created a non profit to help girls.
Not only did these inspiring women help invest in some of the biggest companies in the world, they did all this while juggling work and family. They overcame the obstacles that plague women to this day.
Brotopia by Emily Chang
Officially known as Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley was written by Emily Chang, published in 2018, and has 320 pages.
Melinda Gates was short with her recommendation, stating, “For decades, powerful men have responded to sexism in tech by saying, ‘It’s always been this way.’”
Silicon Valley has a reputation of being a “brotopia” where women don’t live in the same fantasy land as the men. They face many problems like sexism, harassment, lower pay, not being respected, and overall have a toxic workplace.
Emily Chang is sharing all these problems that women face in her book, Brotopia. She shows us how Silicon Valley got this way even though it seems like the dream place to work and invest in great new companies.
She wants the women of Silicon Valley to fight back in these sexist, toxic work environments!
In Brotopia, Emily draws from many different viewpoints including Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, and many more. They will show you just how hard it is for women to find their place in Silicon Valley.
Unfortunately, Silicon Valley isn’t all rainbows and unicorns for women, but Emily Chang is determined to break the mold.
Heartland by Sarah Smarsh
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is a memoir written by Sarah Smarsh. She published the book in 2018 and it is 304 pages long.
Melinda Gates was short and sweet when she recommended this book, saying, “I haven’t been able to put down this memoir.”
Sarah Smarsh grew up in rural Kansas on a wheat farm. She was the fifth generation born to a teen mother, and grew up hard working, yet poor. Her memoir gives us a glimpse of this type of life.
When Sarah was young she enjoyed the freedom and outdoors of the country life, but saw all the struggles of poverty such as bad health conditions, not being able to access medical treatment, terrible job conditions, abusive relationships, and being held down by her circumstances.
Sarah wrote her memoir to raise awareness that just because someone lives in America it doesn’t mean their life is so great and perfect. She shows us just how bad the class divide is in this country.
Another thing that we are able to take away from Heartland is just because someone comes from less doesn’t mean that we should think less of them. We are all human, and Sarah’s book beautifully portrays this.
Awakening Joy by James Baraz
Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness by James Baraz is 336 pages long. This book was published in 2012.
This is a little different from her other recommendations, and is another short Melinda Gates book recommendation. She said, “The book that I have been going back to so much.”
Awakening Joy is a book about happiness, but it’s not the typical self-help type of book. This book teaches you how to train your mind to think differently using proven techniques drawn from Buddhist practices.
James Baraz believes that anyone can use these methods at any time in their life to remain happy even in the worst of conditions. You do not have to have material possession to be happy; instead you need the correct mindset.
A few things you will learn in Awakening Joy are how to make happiness a habit, how to change your mind to focus on well-being instead of the negative, how to find your joy even in the worst of times, how to avoid the things that make you unhappy, how to successfully practice and achieve these mindsets, and more.
The book is broken down into 10 steps, one step for each chapter. Each chapter includes the exercises that you will use to change your mind to focus on happiness.
This is a powerful book that will give anyone hope to turn their life around and achieve real happiness.
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
The Moment of Lift is the first and only book written by Melinda Gates. She published the book in 2021. It has inspired many people around the world and has been recommended by great people including Malala Yousafzai and Brené Brown.
If you are a fan of Melinda Gates you know very well that she has traveled around the world spreading joy with her philanthropy. Along the way she has met some incredible and inspiring people. The Moment of Lift is the story of these inspiring people.
In fact, Melinda Gates said “That is why I had to write this book – to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.”
She shows us exactly what issues we should be making a priority, like child marriages to gender inequality to access to contraceptives.
Not only does she use the stories of the inspiring people that she’s met in her life, but draws from her own personal experiences, including her time with her now ex-husband, Bill Gates.
Using The Moment of Lift, Melinda Gates wants us to lift others up, so that they can lift us up, too.