The Bill Gates Problem

Reviews

An extraordinary and detailed work of investigative journalism into an underexplored nexus of influence in global affairs. Read it and learn the brutal truth: there is nothing altruistic about the world’s favorite billionaire. Schwab makes a strong case, based on years of reporting, that under the direction of a humbler man the Gates Foundation would probably be a more effective force for good. Schwab's excellent exposé of hyper-billionaire ‘myths’ could yet help to catalyse political murmurations towards...more collective ends. Investigative journalism with a fierce polemical edge … Nobody who comes away from reading The Bill Gates Problem will look at him in the same way. A tale of frustration and even rage at the culture of secrecy and often incompetence inside Gates’s philanthropic world, it is also strangely heartening. Tim Schwab has written the definitive critique of Bill Gates as bully-philanthropist. Schwab uses the case of Gates to tell a compelling and carefully researched story that raises disturbing questions about the lack of accountability of power-philanthropy. This is not the story of one bad man, so much as a demonstration of the inability for anyone-no matter how smart or rich-to solve the world's problems from the top down with money and technology. In this incisive and penetrating book, Schwab dares to confront a question society has long ignored: should a secretive, unaccountable billionaire dictate policy in public health, education, and science? Fearlessly rendered and much-needed. Tim Schwab follows the money to expose what happens when one man-however intelligent or well-intentioned-amasses so much wealth and so much power, he can literally dictate to governments around the world. With great skill-and given the range of Bill Gates's influence, considerable courage-Schwab pulls back the curtain to deliver a classic of muckraking journalism. Expand reviews