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These books made an impact on Gates' worldview. Bill Gates pictured.
- In a Reddit AMA, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates shared his two favorite books of 2018.
- Those books are "Factfulness," by the late Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Ronnlund, and Ola Rosling, and "Enlightenment Now," by Steven Pinker.
- The authors of both books argue the world is getting better, not worse, and provide the data to support that perspective.
Bill Gates' favorite books that he read in 2018 both "explain that the world is getting better."
The former Microsoft CEO said as much in a Reddit AMA.
Those two books are "Factfulness," by the late Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Ronnlund, and Ola Rosling, and "Enlightenment Now," by Steven Pinker. Both are "amazing" and "very readable," Gates said in the AMA.
"Factfulness" will be published April 3, 2018. The authors outline the 10 instincts that make us think the world is in worse shape than it really is.
Hans Rosling was a professor of global health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He spent the last few years before his death in February 2017 working on "Factfulness," saying it was "the last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance."
Anna Rosling Ronnlund and Ola Rosling are his daughter-in-law and son, with whom he often collaborated.
Gates called the book "an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world."
"Enlightenment Now," which was published February 2018, makes a similar case: Life is improving overall. On his blog, Gates said it was the best book he'd read in a decade.
As Business Insider previously reported, the book devotes a chapter to each of 15 measures of progress. Pinker, who is a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, includes facts like the global average IQ score is steadily rising and we're less likely to die on the job then we were several decades ago.
Gates wrote: "I read the book slowly since I loved it so much, but I think most people will find it a quick and accessible read. He manages to share a ton of information in a way that's compelling, memorable, and easy to digest."
Business Insider previously reported on a Time editorial by Bill Gates, in which he also argues that "on the whole, the world is getting better," citing a decrease in global poverty, for example.
"Enlightenment Now" is still one of Amazon's most sold and read books. And "Factfulness" has received some rave reviews among early readers.
One of them wrote on the website Goodreads: "Factfulness gives real, data-based information about how we use information and how to do that better. It is frank and it is real and I have never felt so empowered in my life."