Source Code
My Beginnings
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4.5 • 151 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age
“A surprisingly candid memoir of the Microsoft mogul’s early years…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.” —GeekWire
Everyone is programmed a little differently, and Bill Gates' unique insight led to business triumphs that are now widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.
Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.
Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Bill Gates’ enlightening childhood memoir finds a fresh angle on his achievements as an IT pioneer. Source Code fills in key blanks of the tech guru’s pre-Microsoft life, with Gates detailing his formative years in his own words, covering emotional topics from his feelings of isolation as a high-achieving misfit to the eye-opening freedom he felt upon discovering pursuits like hiking and his wonder at his first exposure to rudimentary computers. Source Code is more tender than you might expect, filled with affectionate descriptions of his grandmother, who not only gave unconditional love but taught him how to harness his brain through games of strategy. It has its heart-wrenching moments, too: Gates doesn’t shy away from difficult periods of his life, like the grief and anger he felt and then harnessed after the death of a close teenage friend. Source Code pulls back the curtain on a global leader with thoughtful ruminations on the contributions of love, friendship, and family to his success.
Customer Reviews
Loved learning about this “kid” who changed the world.
I’m a Mac person, but still enjoyed learning about Bill and his history making start.
Source Coder
I really enjoyed reading about Bill Gates and his foray into computers and software. What comes out of the book is the immense dedication it takes to become this successful.
Stunning
That someone who has led a life so,successful, and surrounded by people motivated to protect their good standing with him, Gates is remarkably self aware, sober, and honest in this telling of his formative years.