Houston, we have a billionaire problem. There are 2,781 individuals in the world worth more than a billion dollars, according to Forbes, and together these people have a net worth of $14.2tn, roughly the GDP of the Eurozone.
The context is auspicious, then, for Anupreeta Das’s book Billionaire, Nerd, Saviour, King. Das, the former finance editor of the New York Times, has investigated the life and wealth of the totemic founder of Microsoft, documenting Bill Gates’s rise from boy computer whiz to world’s richest man to greatest living philanthropist to – well, we’ll come to that.
First, a little disclosure. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has supported the Guardian’s global development coverage for many years. Following this newspaper’s tradition of editorial independence, I was primed, therefore, to cheer every…