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The Secret Diary of Bill Gates

Since 1996 The Secret Diary of Bill Gates ha s appeared on the Web. This book is a compilation of a full year”s entries that detail the daily doings of Microsoft”s h ead honcho in a parodic format. ‘Bill Gates is undoubtedly not as happy-go-lucky and slapstick as the narrator of this parody, but that’s exactly why this is more interesting than his real diary. Written as a yearlong series of diary entries, “Bill” obsesses about issues such as his daily net worth, his fame, his IQ, the construction of his humongous mansion, and taking over the universe, plus divulges his lust for hot women, from his wife, Melinda, to the Spice Girls. Entries are populated with Bill’s priorities on issues such as the top 10 most powerful guys on the planet (of which he is always No. 1), top 10 Microsoft bumper stickers, and top 10 dates with Melinda. After reading through a year in the life, you can take the “Are You Like Bill Gates?” quiz. A who’s who glossary defines the people and companies that exist in Bill’s world and a bibliography recommends 20 more books about Bill that you can read. –Cristina Vaamonde

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Bill and Melinda Gates (Front-Page Lives)

Bill Gates, along with his friend Paul Allen, started Microsoft in 1976. It quickly became one of world’s most powerful companies, making Gates a billionaire. Since then, Bill and his wife, Melinda, have become well-known philanthropists, helping people around the world by donating billions of dollars and bringing attention to various causes. What drove Bill Gates to create such an empire? How have their lives changed now that they both work for the Foundation? The exciting biographies in the Front-Page Lives series take an in-depth look at some of the world’s most fascinating people.

The Microsoft File : The Secret Case against Bill Gates

The Microsoft File is an extraordinary fly-on-the-wall account of Microsoft’s intent to monopolize the computer industry. Wendy Goldman Rohm takes you to the inner sanctum of Microsoft, has you sit in on meetings between Microsoft and important customers and competitors, and looks at the struggles of the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice as they try to develop a strategy to counter one of the most serious charges of market manipulation since John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

The Microsoft File is based on information from not one but many “Deep Throats,” as well as internal documents that tell a story of:

> How Microsoft’s predatory marketing and pricing behavior belies its claims of fair competition.

> How Microsoft killed the market for a competitor’s operating system, a system that could have challenged MS-DOS.

> How bugging devices were found in the hotel room of a supposed business partner of Microsoft’s the day before a critical meeting with Microsoft.

> How Microsoft inserted hidden code in the beta version of Windows 3.1, creating fear in the marketplace that competing products would crash and adding a byte in the final version that was marketed so the hidden code wouldn’t appear on the screen.

> How close Apple came to discarding the Macintosh operating system for Windows, and the real reason why Bill Gates decided to invest some 0 million in Apple.

> How Microsoft, despite nondisclosure agreements, obtained and used technological secrets from competitors.

> How the biggest mergers in the software industry unfolded, blow-by-blow, as Microsoft’s competitors tried to survive the increasing power of the Gates juggernaut.

Is Microsoft’s rise as the world’s most powerful and successful company a classic example of the free market, as many Microsoft apologists contend? Is its success, and the failure of other companies, the result of the creative destruction that makes capitalism so strong?  The Microsoft File suggests that other forces were at work.Name the most successful companies over the last 10 years, and you’d be remiss if you didn’t mention Microsoft. Guided by the unique–some would say maniacal–personality of founder Bill Gates, Microsoft has grown faster and touched more lives than just about any other company in recent memory. Over the years, the software giant has been dogged by competitors–mainly in backrooms and courtrooms– and by the government on charges of unholy monopolies, predatory practices, and stifling innovation in the PC industry. As the government’s ongoing antitrust case against Microsoft goes to trial, this critical chorus grows even louder, led in part by Wendy Goldman Rohm’s book, The Microsoft File.

This is the book that Microsoft doesn’t want you to read. With the help of “insider” information from both Microsoft and the government, Goldman Rohm surveys the history of Microsoft’s business practices with PC manufacturers and software vendors. Tracing the development of the government’s antitrust case against Microsoft, starting at the FTC and continuing on at the Justice Department, she paints a harsh and unforgiving picture that’s not at all flattering to Gates or the rest of Microsoft’s top brass. The Bill Gates that emerges from these pages is small, petty, and deeply paranoid. At the same time, she puts a face on the Justice Department that’s never been seen before. For those who revel in examining the dark underbelly of America’s most successful company, The Microsoft File is a required and enormously entertaining read. It’s also a useful primer for anyone interested in the government’s antitrust efforts. Highly recommended. –Harry C. Edwards

The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World’s Richest Man… and the People Who Hate Him

To understand the magnitude of Bill Gates, one must first understand the people who hate him, most of whom suffer from an acute case of “Bill Envy.”
The Plot to Get Bill Gates is the true, hilarious story of a loosely knit cabal of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest and most successful leaders and their quest to defeat the richest man in the world. These leaders are known within Microsoft as Captain Ahab’s Club for their self-destructive fixation with harpooning the Great White Whale of Redmond, all two hundred pounds and billion of him. Acclaimed journalist Gary Rivlin tells their tale as a high-tech variation on Moby-Dick, and
by taking us deep inside the world of Gates and his enemies, he vividly reveals their consuming obsession.
Lead players in The Plot are Lawrence Ellison of Oracle, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, Ray Noorda of Novell, Marc Andreessen and James Barksdale of Netscape, Philippe Kahn of Borland, and Gary Kildall (the unsung programmer who could have been Gates), with special guest appearances by venture capitalist John Doerr, consumer activist Ralph Nader, zealous attorney Gary Reback, and the Fraternal Order of Antitrust Lawyers. The author describes each man’s ill-fated attempt at besting Gates, who seems to become bigger, hungrier, and more dangerous after each attack.
Rivlin also conducts an in-depth investigation of Gates himself, examining each crucial step in the ascension of the slope-shouldered billionaire with bad hair and unearthing the most telling details to explain why Gates is so rich and we aren’t. (The short answer: monomania.) Rivlin concludes with an illuminating analysis of Microsoft’s latest upgrade of its CEO, Gates 3.1, which seems to be operating with fewer bugs than previous incarnations.
Gary Rivlin’s reporting is irreverent and intellectually independent, free of the romanticized portraits and techno-hype perpetuated by many in the media. As an award-winning political reporter, he brings a fresh perspective to the avaricious, bloodthirsty behavior of these new icons. The result is a savagely funny morality play about big business at the century’s end.Money and success do strange things to people, especially when they’re not their own. Perhaps no better example of this phenomenon is Silicon Valley’s obsession with Microsoft and its leader, Bill Gates, an obsession that Gary Rivlin examines with great relish and in great detail in The Plot to Get Bill Gates. Rivlin discovers a “king-sized obsession among one-dimensional workaholics” that’s known in the industry as “Bill Envy,” a phenomenon that has destroyed companies, inspired dozens of jokes (e.g., “How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None. Bill Gates will just redefine Darkness^TM as the new industry standard”), and for some raises the possibility of a wider conspiracy that pits Microsoft against everyone else–Silicon Valley, the Justice Department, even Ralph Nader.

From Gates’s awkward adolescence to his position as the world’s richest man, Rivlin takes a deep look into his character and uses him as a means to reveal the character of those that oppose him, a drama that he likens to that in Moby Dick. Unlike other books about Microsoft (The Microsoft File, How the Web Was Won, Barbarians Led by Bill Gates), Rivlin’s tries not to take sides. Nevertheless, the Captain Ahabs (Ray Noorda, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, among others) come off looking less flawed, but certainly not as smart or as calculating or as dangerous as the white whale (Gates). While most of this material will be familiar to anyone who follows Microsoft and its competitors, Rivlin manages to keep the pages turning with dozens of entertaining anecdotes and stories about Gates and his enemies. The Plot to Get Bill Gates is a must for anyone who loves a good old-fashioned high-tech food fight. –Harry C. Edwards

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Bill Gates: Software King (Book Report Biographies)

Bill Gates Habla (Spanish Edition)

Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime

A heartfelt, deeply personal book, Showing Up for Life shines a bright light on the values and principles that Bill Gates Sr. has learned over a lifetime of “showing up”—lessons that he learned growing up during the Great Depression, and that he instilled in his children and continues to practice on the world stage as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Through the course of several dozen narratives arranged in roughly chronological fashion, Gates introduces the people and experiences that influenced his thinking and guided his moral compass. Among them: the scoutmaster who taught him about teamwork and self reliance; and his famous son, Trey, whose curiosity and passion for computers and software led him to ultimately co-found Microsoft. Through revealing stories of his daughters, Kristi and Libby; his late wife, Mary, and his current wife, Mimi; and his work with Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, among others, he discusses the importance of hard work, getting along, honoring a confidence, speaking out, and much more.

Showing Up for Life translates one man’s experiences over fourscore years of living into an inspiring road map for readers everywhere.

As Bill Gates Sr. puts it:

I’m 83 years old. Representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and everyone who is a part of it has given me the opportunity to see more of the world and its rich possibilities than most people ever do. I never imagined that I’d be working this late in life, or enjoying it so much.A heartfelt, deeply personal book, Showing Up for Life shines a bright light on the values and principles that Bill Gates Sr. has learned over a lifetime of “showing up”—lessons that he learned growing up during the Great Depression, and that he instilled in his children and continues to practice on the world stage as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Through the course of several dozen narratives arranged in roughly chronological fashion, Gates introduces the people and experiences that influenced his thinking and guided his moral compass. Among them: the scoutmaster who taught him about teamwork and self reliance; and his famous son, Trey, whose curiosity and passion for computers and software led him to ultimately co-found Microsoft. Through revealing stories of his daughters, Kristi and Libby; his late wife, Mary, and his current wife, Mimi; and his work with Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, among others, he discusses the importance of hard work, getting along, honoring a confidence, speaking out, and much more.

Showing Up for Life translates one man’s experiences over fourscore years of living into an inspiring road map for readers everywhere.

As Bill Gates Sr. puts it:

I’m 83 years old. Representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and everyone who is a part of it has given me the opportunity to see more of the world and its rich possibilities than most people ever do. I never imagined that I’d be working this late in life, or enjoying it so much.

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Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace

Praise for Overdrive

Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace

“James Wallace offers many tales of . . . temper tantrums, antitrust tussles with the Justice Department, and general dirty tricks Microsoft has allegedly played on its competitors.” -The New York Times Book Review

Praise for James Wallace’s

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire

“A stupendous success story. This is the most informative book yet on Bill Gates and Microsoft.” -the Washington Post

“Remarkable . . . This book will make you wonder why you didn’t buy Microsoft stock when it went public.” -The Wall Street Journal

“An engaging, almost classic tale of a boy who finds power in gadgets and then won’t let go.” -Los Angeles TimesWhile Microsoft was occupied with the largest, most expensive consumer marketing effort in history, the launch of Windows 95, Netscape was equally busy capturing the Web browser market. By mid-1995 it looked as if Bill Gates and company had missed the paradigm shift created by the Internet, and many pundits doubted Microsoft could recover. Meanwhile, the Justice Department was aggressively investigating claims of unfair practices levied by Microsoft’s competitors. Suddenly the company found itself in the unfamiliar role of lumbering corporate giant–and underdog. James Wallace’s Overdrive, his sequel to Hard Drive, is the story of Microsoft’s response to this challenge. A veteran investigative reporter, the author paints a vivid portrait of Gates’s determination and competitive ferocity, with a host of revealing anecdotes and details as backdrop. The battle for control of cyberspace is far from over, but Microsoft is clearly not to be trifled with. The tale of how the company repositioned itself in the race makes for fascinating reading.

Bill Gates (Community Builders)

A biography of Bill Gates, focusing on the Seattle business community and the global village that he has helped create through his work as a computer software entrepreneur.

Bill Gates (Essential Lives)

Big Shots: Business the Bill Gates Way

Brought completely up to date for this new edition, Business The Bill Gates Way not only reveals the secrets of Gates’ remarkable success but also draws out the universal lessons and identifies strategies that can be applied to any business or career. From hiring very smart people to loving what you make, and from crushing your competitors to never, ever taking your eye off the ball, Business The Bill Gates Way reveals the secrets of phenomenal success.

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Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey

From the early years of fur trading to today’s Silicon Valley empires, America has proved to be an extraordinarily fertile land for the creation of enormous fortunes. Each generation has produced one or two phenomenally successful leaders, often in new industries that caught contemporaries by surprise, and each of these new fortunes reconfirmed the power of fanatically single-minded visionaries. John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the first American moguls; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan were kingpins of the Gilded Age; David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, and Sam Walton were masters of mass culture. Today Oprah Winfrey, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates are giants of the Information Age. America has again and again been the land of dizzying mountains of wealth.

Here, in a wittily told and deeply insightful history, is a complete set of portraits of America’s greatest generators of wealth. Only such a collective study allows us to appreciate what makes the great entrepreneurs really tick. As H. W. Brands shows, these men and women are driven, they are focused, they deeply identify with the businesses they create, and they possess the charisma necessary to persuade other talented people to join them. They do it partly for the money, but mostly for the thrill of creation.

The stories told here — including how Nike got its start as a business-school project for Phil Knight; how Robert Woodruff almost refused to take control of Coca-Cola to spite his father; how Thomas Watson saved himself from prison by rescuing Dayton, Ohio, from a flood; how Jay Gould nearly cornered the gold market; how H. L. Hunt went from gambling at cards to gambling with oilleases — make for a narrative that is always lively and revealing and often astonishing. An observer in 1850, studying John Jacob Astor, would not have predicted the rise of Henry Ford and the auto industry. Nor would a student of Ford in 1950 have anticipated the takeoff of direct marketing that made Mary Kay Ash a trusted guide for millions of American women. Full of surprising insights, written with H. W. Brands’s trademark flair, the stories in “Masters of Enterprise” are must reading for all students of American business history.Masters of Enterprise examines the lives of 25 American entrepreneurs, from John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, to find the common ingredients of their success. “First, all had good health and abundant energy,” writes H.W. Brands, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, “enough for half-a-dozen careers each.” The other elements that Brands identifies: all were hungry for success; they were persuasive at getting others on their side; they intensely identified with their work; and each had a burning creative vision. Brands dedicates a chapter to each of the 25, starting chronologically with real estate magnate John Jacob Astor in the late 1700s, and ending with software giant Bill Gates in the late 1990s. He describes the entrepreneurs’ background, vision, and major deals, and draws lessons for today’s business mavens.

Modern-day speculators might find enlightening the story of Jay Gould’s cornering of the gold market in the 1800s, for instance. Brands dramatically describes the maneuvers Gould took to hide his buying and selling–and his underhanded but failed attempts at keeping the U.S. government from flooding the market with gold and driving the price down. And women entrepreneurs of today might find inspiring the lives of cosmetics titan Mary Kay Ash, designer Liz Claiborne, and television and movie star Oprah Winfrey–all overcame obstacles, personal and professional, to become giants in their fields.

Others profiled: industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Walt Disney, cable-television pioneer Ted Turner, and Intel’s Andrew Grove. Well written and filled with anecdotes, Masters of Enterprise should be an entertaining read for entrepreneurs and fans of business biography and history. –Dan Ring

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Bill Gates: The co-creator of Microsoft

He has been called the sultan of software and the master of the modern PC now his story comes to comics. Follow the life of William Gates from his early days writing basic code through the rise of Microsoft to his current humanitarian works. See what has driven this amazing man to become an architect of the future

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