Bill Gates is offering all 2018 college graduates a free download of his favorite book, Hans Rosling’s Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, reports Time.
The book by a Swedish physician, professor and statistician is “an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world,” said Gates in a blog post.
Rosling, who died of cancer before the book was published, wrote: “When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems — and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better.”
Anyone receiving an associate’s, bachelor’s, or post-graduate degree in the U.S. this year may download the book here.
“It’s important for graduates to feel freshly enraged,” writes Erin Bartnett on Electric Lit. While “we do need to talk about facts (now more than ever!),” she sees Factfulness as encouraging graduates to “dive in to the status quo” rather than “feel empowered to dismantle the systems the rest of us might feel like we’re already mired in.”
She presents a list of alternative choices for graduates, such as “Tracy K. Smith’s poetry, to remind them to look up, pay attention, and observe structures that can contain the known and unknown. Or a children’s book—like Kenny’s Window by Maurice Sendak. Or The Dispossessed, to put ideas in their heads about alternatives to capitalism.”
Graduates should learn how to get in The Third Door, advises the New York Post.
Alex Banayan, the 25-year-old son of Jewish Persian immigrants, dropped out of college to interview achievers such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Lady Gaga. He sees life, business and success like a nightclub.
Rather than the main entrance with its long lines and bouncers, or the VIP entrance reserved for the elite, Banayan advises young people to “run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen — there’s always a way.”
Or write a book?