17 books Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg think everyone should read

Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, two of the wealthiest and most successful people in the world, both credit reading as integral to their success.

Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, reportedly reads 50 books a year. In 2015, Zuckerberg, the current CEO of Facebook, created an online book club in which he read a book every two weeks.

Here are some of the titles the pair has recommended over the past few years.

'Creativity, Inc.' by Ed Catmull

Genome science can hardly be considered a topic of mainstream interest, but Gates says Mukherjee manages to capture its relevance to people's daily lives. He seeks to answer big questions concerning our personalities and what makes us, us.

"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates wrote.

Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author. 

'The Gene: An Intimate History' by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Genome science can hardly be considered a topic of mainstream interest, but Gates says Mukherjee manages to capture its relevance to people's daily lives. He seeks to answer big questions concerning our personalities and what makes us, us.

"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates wrote.

Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author. 

'Better Angels of Our Nature,' by Steven Pinker

Zuckerberg admits that this 800-page, data-rich book from a Harvard psychologist can seem intimidating.

But the writing is actually easy to get through, and he thinks that Pinker's study of how violence has decreased over time despite being magnified by a 24-hour news cycle and social media is something that can offer a life-changing perspective.

It should be noted that Bill Gates also considers this one of the most important books he's ever read.

If you'd like to save some time, check out our summary of the book.