Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

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From the finance editor of The New York Times, an insightful and illuminating examination of Bill Gates—one of the most powerful and provocative figures of the past four decades—and an exploration of our national fixation on billionaires.

Few billionaires have been in the public eye for as long, and in as many guises, as Bill Gates. At first hailed as a tech visionary, the Microsoft cofounder morphed into a ruthless capitalist, only to change yet again when he fashioned himself into a global do-gooder. Along the way, Gates influenced how we think about tech founders, as the products they make and the ideas they sell continue to dominate our lives. Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he also set a new standard for high-profile, billionaire philanthropy. But there is more to Gates’s story, and here, Das’s revelatory reporting shows us that billionaires have secrets and philanthropy can have a dark side.

Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with current and former employees of the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, academics, nonprofits, and those with insight into the Gates universe, Das delves into Gates’s relationships with Warren Buffett, Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda French Gates, and others, to uncover the truths behind the public persona. In telling Gates’s story, Das also provides a new way to think about how billionaires wield their power, manipulate their image, and pursue philanthropy to become heroes, repair damaged reputations, and direct policy to achieve their preferred outcomes.

“A balanced, perceptive, and thought-provoking portrait of a man and his times” (Booklist) Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King is an important story of money and government, wealth and power, and media and image, and the ways in which the world’s richest people hold us in their thrall.

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Power and Wealth
Review: A wonderful read, fascinating and eloquent. I was reminded of the old adage “never meet your heroes”

Reviewer: Johnny
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Worth reading
Review: Growing up in the Seattle area myself, and having been exposed to Gates since the beginning, I found this book to be fairly interesting in that it filled in some blanks on what he has been doing for the past 20 years, and what was behind his divorce.The author touched on Gates’ privilege growing up, but I felt understated it significantly. His father was literally one of the names in the top law firm in Seattle for decades, and although the firm has changed names, merged, etc, it still exists as K&L Gates even though Gates Sr. is no longer alive. His mother was on the board of regents at the University of Washington.It seemed the book was 50% about Gates and the rest about billionaires in general, their power, influence, spending, philanthropy, etc. with plenty of anecdotes and examples from the likes of Buffett, Bezos, etc. Even though she doesn’t really explicitly say it until the last pages, it’s clear Gates possesses a massive ego, hubris, etc. despite the best efforts of his handlers to keep that side of him tamped down.He seems incapable of admitting he’s wrong, even refusing to cop to his serial philandering. It’s great that he’s donating so much of his money to worthy causes, but even that comes across as smarmy because of the publicity seeking from his handlers, especially lobbying for a Nobel Prize… unbelievable.

Reviewer: Jeff
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Disappointing: Weak reporting lacks focus
Review: I agree with the need for a book deeply reporting on Mr. Gates and his foundation’s activities, and about his post-CEO impact and life. I am not necessarily an admirer or detractor but would like to know more. I made it halfway through 2016’s No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy and had to put it down, as it began as a dissertation and relates general critiques of the foundation’s programmatic philosophies (e.g., neoliberal educational reform) rather than an actual exposé. So I was quite excited to pick up Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King, written by New York Times reporter Anupreeta Das and informed by “hundreds” of mostly anonymous interviews.Wow, was I disappointed. I am giving it two stars because I would not recommend reading it. It is fine so far as it goes as a summary of past reporting on Gates in recent years. In my view, the book’s original sin is it adds little, and nothing of note, to others’ reporting.Nobody is perfect, so delving into a famous and powerful individual would presumably dig up some dirt. Das doesn’t break any news here. Gates’s 2000 marital affair has been reported. She mentions another ‘rumored’ one in 2010 with an international bridge player. I am not excusing such behavior; frankly, I find it abhorrent. But don’t color me surprised to see that the richest man in the world had extracurricular activities. Melinda herself was a former Microsoft subordinate.More bizarre and perhaps intriguing in what is termed Gates’s ‘relationship’ with Jeffrey Epstein. Das tells us about this ‘relationship’ on page 1, which led me to surmise that the book would either be a hit job or break a bona fide scandal.Das devotes a chapter to this supposed relationship. Let me sum it up for you. The bottom line is that Epstein was a con artist and criminal abuser who claimed he was a billionaire to ingratiate himself with billionaires and royalty and his many victims. In the wake of the Giving Pledge, Epstein claimed he wanted to help billionaires donate to the Gates Foundation. If Gates – one of the world’s most recognizable people, who has traveled with a team of armed guards for more than thirty years – did anything other than speak with Epstein about the latter’s attempted philanthropic cons, which led to nothing, then no person has ever discovered it. My point is that at this moment in time, the intimation that anything else happened with Gates and Epstein is in the realm of conspiracy theories. Prince Andrew he is not.Another regrettable part of the book is three chapters dedicated to what could be characterized as armchair social science about “billionaires” and “nerds.” Chapter 1 is entitled “Why We Love Billionaires” while Chapter 10 – I am not making this up – is “Why We Hate Billionaires.” Chapter 2 is “The Ur Nerd of Capitalism,” a wandering discourse on the concept of a nerd. There are only 10 chapters in the book. These three have little to do with Gates and instead offer disjointed paragraphs on Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, and so forth. Reading canned billionaire biographies and the etymology of “nerd” is something I could do on my own, if I wanted to, and not why I bought the book. (I have read Ashlee Vance’s excellent biography of Elon Musk, which shows how interesting such subject matter can be in the right hands.) Presumably these 3 incongruous chapters were appended to boost page count from roughly 200 to 300. I do not think they were written by AI (too smooth for that) but it would not surprise me if they were initially drafted by AI.A chapter on Gates’s relationship with Warren Buffett is more revealing for what is says about the author’s tilted viewpoint. Over the last 20 years, Buffett has kept his promise to dedicate most of his philanthropic resources to the Gates Foundation for Bill, Melinda (before the divorce) and their staff to dispose of as they see fit. Buffett, 94, recently announced that, upon his death, his assets would go to his children’s foundations. Neither his children nor their foundations were equipped to manage such sums of money 20 years ago. Das reinterprets Buffet’s planned bequests to his children as ‘evidence’ of a schism between Gates and Buffett. So let me get this theory straight. During his lifetime, Buffett picked Bill and the Gates Foundation, of all the people and organizations in the world, to receive most of his donations of Berkshire Hathaway stock, his life’s work. Buffett has donated about $40 billion to Bill’s foundation. And supposedly they have a bad relationship? Buffett emailed with the author at length (Bill and his people declined interviews) and politely denied the schism theory. It is curious to me, then, while dedicating a chunk of her book to her perception of something that does not exist, that the author does not do much to examine the impact of these gifts on global public health, which seems to be fertile ground to explore.The chapter on Cascade Investments, which manages Gates’s wealth, does contain some allegations of bullying by the longtime manager there. But it is not an exaggeration to say the Wikipedia entry on Cascade has more substance. Again, it has all been reported better elsewhere.There are a number of typos in the book (“riding golf” instead of horses was memorable) and strange, likely inaccurate, personal attacks (“On one of his earliest trips to India for Microsoft, Gates remarked to a colleague how surprised he was that so many people in the country spoke English, apparently unaware of its legacy of British colonialism.”). This should be compared with Das’s saintly portrayal of Melinda Gates, who after she received $12 billion in the divorce, “has created a firm very much in her own image, setting a tone that combines ambition with humility, and expressing empowerment by embracing vulnerability. She speaks the language of empathy, compassion, and human connection…” etc.).Das also has a penchant for overwrought and unnecessary language. Her chapter “Global Savior, Big Philanthropist” begins: “The history of the world is heavy with tales of epidemics, disease, and death. Terrifying plagues, pestilences, and poxes have felled populations throughout the centuries. Fevers and humors, outbreaks and contagions have confounded generations of medical experts.” No kidding. Or, she informs us: “Marriages are phantasmagorias. They change shape, they confound, they bewilder. Sometimes, they start out sturdy as a tree trunk and end up fragile as splinters…” and so on. Elsewhere, she writes: “It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to support a billionaire’s interests and activities.” Later she mentions Donald Trump, who, she explains, was “Obama’s successor” as president. This is just some of the phraseology I noted in the margins.I did enjoy the chapter on “The Pivot” exploring how Bill’s imagemakers transformed him from titan of industry to the Mister Rogers of global health. And as I said, it’s a fine summary of Bill Gates for those who might be interested in that. It is biased but not to the point of being unreadable. It would have been nice if the author had given Gates some credit for being the world’s most generous philanthropist.I did not set out to write a mostly negative review. Two stars is not one star, and Das is not a terrible researcher or writer, for the most part. But in looking back I have to admit the book is just not very good. My guess is that Das set out to do a real exposé but after a year or two she didn’t find enough dirt and this is the result.

Reviewer: Bonzai
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A stilted, interesting read
Review: This book is well researched but seems to start and end with a bias, painting Gates as a well intentioned prometheus, critiquing his longstanding use of a media team, his obvious personal indiscretions(and worse), and even his philanthropic priorities and influence. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment for Gates and to a lesser extent for other billionaires who choose to give away their money, based on their own priorities and actual data based outcomes… and talk about it. To which I’d respond, “At least they are giving it away… to something more noble than politics!

Reviewer: CK
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A smart dissection of wealth and power
Review: This is a deeply reported, engagingly written and incisive account of America’s fascination with wealth and the billionaire class, and the often corrosive effect that can have on society.

Reviewer: Tom Groenfeldt
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Useful if you’ve never heard of Bill Gates before
Review: Scattershot research, much of it from existing publications,, bland over-generalizations about what we all think of billionaires, rehash of the Microsoft story. I started skimming in Chapter 1 and decided it was a waste of time in Chapter 2…just came to Amazon reviews to see if others felt the same way. The blurb writers like Robert Reich and William D. Cohan should be embarrassed.

Reviewer: Uncle Sam
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Bloviation not reporting
Review: i bought the book hoping to learn more about Bill Gates, but the book is mainly the author locating about various topics, some having to do with Gates and some not.

Reviewer: Robin L. King
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Left leaning critique of a remarkable legacy
Review: Very liberal (left leaning) interpretation of Gates career and contribution to society – not only of his business career but also his philanthropic legacy.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A Good easy read written by an accomplished journalist who knows how to bring out the nuances of the topic – Bill Gates personality. I would have perhaps liked some harder speculation on the really good and quite dark aspects of the character other books have highlighted. Maybe a bit more comparison to similar billionaires who grew a conscience (or did they?) could have been more extensive. But its a thought-provoking book and most enjoyable to read.

Reviewer: Russell Blackwell
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great gift for Christmas

Reviewer: J Donoghue
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Many thousands of words too long with meandering context setting. Gates is almost a periphery character to the rambling story. Chapter on Buffett and Gates’s relationship hints but doesn’t deliver anything new. If you’re generally interested in software, Gates, Buffett, or philanthropy, it’s worth a quick read. But not compelling. Big on context, light on detail.

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