Biography

He is Thomas Edison and Henry Ford rolled into one -- except that William Henry Gates III maybe smarter and more successful than either. He is America's richest man, and on the corporate landscape, he may well be the most feared. In less than a generation, Bill Gates has done nothing less than change the way we live and work.

Here is Bill Gate's story, taking you inside the mind of this brilliant visionary and inside the rise of Microsoft, the world's most succesful corporation. What unique combination of historical factors and personal qualities made Gates the right man at the right time? How did he invent an industry from scratch, and what choices -- from people to products -- made Microsoft the resounding success it has become? How has the company faces Apple, Netscape, and its other competitors and partners? From Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus to Gates' relationships with women and with other business people, like fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, here is a compelling portrait of a unique American citizen at the dawn of the twenty-first century: a man whose career, and his effect on our world, has only begun.

In 1994, as his country descended into the madness of genocide, Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana underwent the mind-numbing pain of having members of his church and family butchered. John refused to become a part of the systemic hatred. He founded the Sonrise orphanage and school for children orphaned in the genocide, and he now leads reconciliation efforts between his own Tutsi people, the victims of this horrific massacre, and the perpetrators, the Hutus. His remarkable story is one that demands to be told.

Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother--his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love.