'The Gene: An Intimate History' by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Genome science can hardly be considered a topic of mainstream interest, but Gates says Mukherjee manages to capture its relevance to people's daily lives. He seeks to answer big questions concerning our personalities and what makes us, us.

"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates writes.

Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author.