Book Review: Source Code, by Bill Gates

SOURCE CODE: My Beginnings, by Bill GatesWhen I first heard rumors that Bill Gates had been working on a memoir, my curiosity was piqued.The tech mogul and philanthropist has cut an unusual figure, and not just because of his pioneering role in the software boom as the co-founder of Microsoft, or the billions he has poured into global health through his foundation.In 2021, his 27-year marriage to Melinda French Gates ended after she filed for divorce.

Reports trickled out about overtures to female staffers and extramarital affairs.Beginning in 2011, he met several times with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who by then had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution of a minor.

Gates has since explained that he only agreed to meet Epstein in order to discuss philanthropy, and expressed regrets for doing so.Unlike a new generation of tech billionaires, Gates has not gone MAGA (though he did have a three-hour-long dinner with Donald Trump after the 2024 election, and came away “impressed”).Gates, who turns 70 in October, has published other books, but these were dutiful volumes about technology and pandemics and climate change.A memoir would offer him the chance to reflect and expand on what has been an undeniably eventful life.

What might he have to say?Not much, it turns out — at least not yet.“Source Code,” the first of three projected volumes, begins in earnest with his birth in Seattle, in 1955, and ends before 1980, when the young startup Microsoft embarked on the road to personal-computing dominance with the MS-DOS operating system.

Such a limited time frame allows Gates to roam freely in the memory palace of his youth without getting tangled in the thickets of his later life.The voice in this book is upbeat, wryly self-deprecating and unflaggingly congenial.(In his acknowledgments, Gates credits Rob Guth with “extracting, guiding and giving form to my memories.”) His early years are recounted with wholesome scenes of jigsaw puzzles and gunnys...