Bill Gates’s New ‘Favorite Book of All Time’ Will Give You Reason to Feel Hopeful

Outside of Oprah, Bill Gates has become the go-to person for book recommendations.

So when the Microsoft founder announced late last month that he had replaced Steven Pinker’s history-of-progress tome The Better Angels of Our Nature as his favorite read, we took notice.

Turns out, his new favorite read is simply Pinker’s follow-up, Enlightenment Now. The book charts violence throughout history and applies data to 15 different measure of progress. Apparently, things are getting better — Gates notes that we’re now far less likely to die on the job, our global IQ is rising and, most importantly, time doing laundry has fallen from 11.5 hours per week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress comes out February 27th.