A selection of memoir and autobiography book covers published by Penguin.

New memoirs and biographies 2025

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New autobiography books and memoirs to read this year

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic isn't over, but even as governments around the world strive to put it behind us, they're also starting to talk about what happens next. How can we prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy? Can we even hope to accomplish this? 
 
Bill Gates believes the answer is yes, and in this book he lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another disaster like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world's foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, he first makes us understand the science of corona diseases. Then he helps us understand how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, can not only ward off another COVID-like catastrophe but also go far to eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu. 
 
Here is a clarion call - strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance - from one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists.

Every expert's door opens to Gates and he is a fiendish researcher ... formidably informative ... One of his most intruiging insights was that there is a rough correlation between how much people trust their governments and a country's success in fighting the pandemic ... he comes up with four recommendations - make better tools to deal with infectious diseases; develop his pandemic fire brigade; help pooer countries to develop disease surveillance; and strengthen primary health care systems, especially in low and middle-income countries. Who could argue?

In 2015, the American technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates warned that humanity wasn't ready for a pandemic. Seven years on, as the world emerges (hopefully) from a pandemic for which it wasn't ready, he thinks we have it within our power to make sure this one was the last. There will be more disease outbreaks, but we now possess the tools and the knowledge to prevent them from becoming global catastrophes. Gates's optimism is refreshing after the gloom of the last two years. ... The roadmap he lays out sounds feasible. It involves strengthening disease surveillance and strengthening primary healthcare systems around the world ... Gates's proposals are wise, and his goals should be our goals.

In this concise and lucid book, global health activist Gates reflects on the current COVID-19 pandemic, considers future ones, and renders several sensible recommendations for prevention . . . Passionate but never preachy, Gates delivers an expert, well-reasoned, and robust appeal for the world to unite in averting upcoming pandemics.

Gates is good at guiding readers through his blueprint for the technological, economic and regulatory fixes to stop the next pathogen from causing global havoc, never assuming too much knowledge. ... His book is punctuated with powerful examples from personal experience. ... How to Prevent the Next Pandemic ... couldn't be more timely, with thousands still dying daily. As he writes, "once covid is no longer an acute threat, don't forget about what it has done".

if this book stimulates even a little limit-pushing of the sort Mr Gates suggests, it will have served its purpose well.

His last book was about climate change, that other issue which, along with pandemics, he considers "existential" for mankind. ... Now, with the same can-do, roll-up-the-sleeves attitude, he lays out, step by step, the system that needs to be put in place to prevent another - potentially far more deadly - pandemic.

Gates delivers a thoughtful exploration of how lessons learned from Covid-19 can inform future global public health policies. In accessible prose, he spells out steps for preventing future pandemics, among them creating a global task force dedicated to doing so . . . Gates is realistic about what he's up against . . . but he does a good job of making [the task force's] $1 billion price tag seem reasonable.

In How to Prevent the Next Pandemic he applies his technocratic approach to preparing the world for future public health emergencies. That means building early warning systems that could identify novel illnesses when they first start to circulate in human populations; developing better treatment and vaccine technologies that can quickly tackle brand new pathogens; and optimising processes and building manufacturing facilities that could quickly mass-produce things like medicines and rapid tests in times of emergency. At the heart of Gates's plan is a new institution he calls Germ (Global Epidemic Response and Mobilisation), composed of a few thousand experts - from epidemiologists to vaccinologists to diplomats - who would be on standby in case of a global threat. In between emergencies, this group would go around the world to strengthen pandemic-prevention infrastructure and encourage governments to keep spending on things like disease-monitoring and scientific research. None of the ideas in the book are radical; indeed, scientists have been arguing for some version of all them for several decades. But, given who is making the recommendations, people with the power to make change might finally listen.

The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. 
 
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. 
 
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions-suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. 
 
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Gates' book is compulsively readable. His ambition was to 'cut through the noise' and give consumers better tools for understanding what works, an ambition he meets admirably. It more than that, however. Gates can get an audience with anyone, can marshal almost limitless resources, and is dogged in the detail. The result - particularly in the wake of the Trump presidency - is thrilling

Of the many books I have come across recently making the case that climate change will be a catastrophe, but we can do something about it, this is the best ... The relentless practicality of the book combined with Gates's firm faith in innovation do not promote despair. He exudes optimism; things will get better, not least because, as John Lennon once sang, they can't get no worse

It is mostly concerned with solutions rather than problems. This already marks it out as something of an outlier within environmental literature... if you're after an approachable book about what needs to happen next, this is a great place to start

Bold but well argued ... a compelling explanation of how the world can stop global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions effectively to zero... [Gates] is a serious and genuine force for good on climate change

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is clear, concise on a colossal subject, and intelligently holistic in its approach to the problem.

It all makes for a meaty manifesto which Gates hopes can offer sufficient variety to appeal across political divides and  "shift the conversation" away from the polarisation and misinformation that has clouded discussion about climate change up until now.

Books about the environment can induce a paralysing despair. The billionaire Bill Gates is a can-do, problem-solving chap, and his book is full of detailed, practical plans

Gates's carefully packaged nuggets of information are not only easy to understand, but they aim to provide the reader with practical tools to engage with the density of climate change information ... What Gates has achieved with his book is something rare in the swelling arena of popular climate literature. The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist has compiled a solutions-based strategy that is as informed on the commercial realities of scaling new technologies as it is on the environmental consequences of not doing so.

The most refreshing aspect of this book is its bracing mix of cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism ... Ultimately [Gates's] book is a primer on how to reorganise the global economy so that innovation focuses on the world's gravest problems. It is a powerful reminder that if mankind is to get serious about tackling them, it must do more to harness the one natural resource available in infinite quantity-human ingenuity.

Gates plots out, in patient, simple prose, a pathway that would allow us to reduce carbon emissions from the current 51 billion tonnes a year to zero by 2050.

"System change not climate change!" cry the protesters, demanding that we choose between capitalism and a healthy planet. "Oh!" the less ascetically minded among us might pout. "Can't we have both?" Thankfully, according to Bill Gates, we can. In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster he outlines the new technologies we need to fight climate change, and how businesses can help to invent and deploy them. Capitalism is not only capable of stopping climate change, he says, it's also the only way to provide a decent standard of living to the world's poorest.

This is an optimistic account of how climate change might be solved without destroying the world's economies in the process.

Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen; today is cochair of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. He also launched Breakthrough Energy, an effort to commercialize clean energy and other climate-related technologies.

Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. 
 
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions-suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. 
 
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Succeeding in the Digital Economy

Business at the Speed of Thought

Bill Gates is the chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation, which employs 27,000 people in 60 countries. His vision and commitment regarding personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and in the advancement of software technology. He lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two children.

Most companies have a sizeable investment in technology but are realising only 20% of its potential benefit. BUSINESS @ THE SPEED OF THOUGHT introduces the concept of the digital nervous system which unites all systems and processes under one common infrastructure, allowing companies to make quantum leaps in efficiency, growth and profit. Using detailed tours of Microsoft and other major corporations, Gates demonstrates how integrated technology can transform any business by energizing its three major elements: customer/partner relationships, employees and process, and offers practical suggestions on how this can be achieved.

Bill Gates

Refreshingly frank ... Bill Gates is John McEnroe of the tech world ... [he] recounts the first two decades of his life, from his birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft and its agreement to supply a version of the Basic programming language to Apple Computer in 1977. There is a genuine gratitude for influential mentors, and a wry mood of self-deprecation throughout ... a sense of the writer, older and wiser, trying to redeem the past through understanding it better

A highly readable account of his early life up to the creation of Microsoft, Source Code is unusually personal and laced with self-awareness. [Gates] doesn’t hold back from admitting his own shortcomings [and] delivers a fast-paced account of the rise from programming prodigy to budding tech mogul, replete with cliffhanger moments and revealing new detail

[Source Code] arrives at an unusual moment, as the tech billionaires have been unleashed. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – their success has given them power that they are enthusiastically, even gleefully, using in divisive ways ... He is a counterpoint to the moguls in the news ... Writing an autobiography is another way Gates is different from his peers, few of whom seem so introspective

Charmingly told ... Source Code isn’t so much a book about the early days of computing software as a lament to a bygone America: it’s as filled with nostalgia as Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie or Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. It immerses us fully in how it felt to be a middle-class child in the 1960s Seattle suburbs, and what it was like, a decade later, to be at the forefront of a small but world-altering technical revolution

There is utility to be had … but there is also joy: the joy at marveling at genius coming into focus — confident, watchful, disciplined, exuberant, boyish and prickly — and the joy at watching a door left ajar kicked open wide. Yet the book is more than just that. Subtly, searchingly, always trusting the reader, Gates explores the mysteries of why he of all people became the Bill Gates: not only the first of the world-conquering tech titans of our era but also, in his second act, likely the best of them

A gentle, pensive autobiography ... the pleasure of this reflective book is the sense of Old Bill Gates peeking over your shoulder, as bemused by Young Bill Gates as you are

Illuminating….Very much a bildungsroman…. A human story

A remarkably introspective and personally revealing tour through some of the key moments and experiences that shaped Gates the boy and teenage programming whiz, years before he became a business titan

Reading this book feels like watching someone take a well-known black-and-white sketch, fill in the details, and paint it in vivid color

My Beginnings

Everyone is programmed a bit differently. Source Code tells the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today. Taking us back to his beginnings, Gates describes with candour his childhood in Seattle, the centrality of family – his close relationship with his card-playing grandmother and his demanding but caring parents – his struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, his first deep friendships and the impact of losing his closest friend. 
 
We follow his extraordinary development as a restless teenager who discovered a love of coding and computing at the dawn of a new era, and see the earliest signs of the phenomenal business acumen that led him to drop out of Harvard at the age of 20 to devote all his energies to Microsoft. We also learn what distinguishes him from others in his line: from his first encounters with the three Steves – Jobs, Wozniak and Ballmer – to when Microsoft signed its first deal with Apple in the late 1970s and beyond, Gates never forgot his mother’s reminder that he was merely a steward of any wealth that he gained. 
 
This warm and inspiring book allows readers to understand Gates's energy and ambition – and to see how he sets himself in the world.

Bill Gates

Praise for Source Code

Refreshingly frank ... Bill Gates is John McEnroe of the tech world ... [he] recounts the first two decades of his life, from his birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft and its agreement to supply a versi ...

A highly readable account of his early life up to the creation of Microsoft, Source Code is unusually personal and laced with self-awareness. [Gates] doesn’t hold back from admitting his own shortcomin ...

[Source Code] arrives at an unusual moment, as the tech billionaires have been unleashed. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – their success has given them power that they are enthusiastically, even gleef ...

Refreshingly frank ... Bill Gates is John McEnroe of the tech world ... [he] recounts the first two decades of his life, from his birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft and its agreement to supply a versi ...

A highly readable account of his early life up to the creation of Microsoft, Source Code is unusually personal and laced with self-awareness. [Gates] doesn’t hold back from admitting his own shortcomin ...

[Source Code] arrives at an unusual moment, as the tech billionaires have been unleashed. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – their success has given them power that they are enthusiastically, even gleef ...

Refreshingly frank ... Bill Gates is John McEnroe of the tech world ... [he] recounts the first two decades of his life, from his birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft and its agreement to supply a versi ...

A highly readable account of his early life up to the creation of Microsoft, Source Code is unusually personal and laced with self-awareness. [Gates] doesn’t hold back from admitting his own shortcomin ...

[Source Code] arrives at an unusual moment, as the tech billionaires have been unleashed. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – their success has given them power that they are enthusiastically, even gleef ...

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