Publishers Weekly
09/18/2023
The Microsoft mogul’s vaunted charity has done more harm than good, according to this heated polemic. Journalist Schwab debuts with an exploration of the allegedly counterproductive machinations of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—“one of the most feared organizations on earth,” Schwab writes, because its vast funding resources give it dominion over the global nonprofit sector. Much of his criticism targets Gates’s work on vaccines: the Gates Foundation both dominated and botched the World Health Organization’s COVAX program to procure Covid vaccines, Schwab argues, resulting in a tragic scarcity of vaccines in Africa and other poor regions. He also tags Gates with pushing America toward the Common Core program of educational standards, which failed to improve student performance, and prodding African farmers to use genetically modified crops that failed to improve yields. Along the way Schwab probes Gates’s egomania and rages, his harvesting of tax breaks, his chumminess with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and vague intimations of racism at the Gates Foundation. Much of Schwab’s case against Gates is simply that he is a billionaire and therefore a defender of inequality and “a canker on democracy.” Still, Schwab’s critique hits home when he details how Gates Foundation initiatives have misfired with little benefit from billions spent. Gates’s detractors will find useful ammunition here. Photos. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
New York Times Editors' Choice
"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."
—The New York Times
"Schwab’s excellent exposé of hyper-billionaire ‘myths’ could yet help to catalyse political murmurations towards...more collective ends."
—Nature
"[A] muckraking work of 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."
—The Times
“In Stage One of the neoliberal revolution, we cut taxes, encouraged tech monopolies, deregulated everything, and built up a set of billionaires like the world had never seen before. Stage Two will come when we learn to love all these changes—because those billionaires are fine people doing good in our sadly privatized world. Thanks to Tim Schwab’s devastating account of the Gates Foundation, however, that day of rationalization may never arrive. Read it and learn the brutal truth: there is nothing altruistic about the world’s favorite billionaire.”
—Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas
"Schwab’s deep reporting offers a convincing and informative alternative to the established image of the Gates Foundation."
—Booklist (starred review)
"An eye-opening look at the use of tax-subsidized money by private philanthropy."
—Kirkus
“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.”
—Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor, The American Prospect
"An extraordinary and detailed work of investigative journalism into an underexplored nexus of influence in global affairs."
—The Telegraph
“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. As this well-argued and immensely engaging account of Bill Gates’s forays into world-saving by fiat make clear, the problem with Big Philanthropy is the Big Hubris that comes along with it.”
—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest
"Although Schwab’s book is 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. Perhaps we are starting to solve the “Bill Gates Problem” by the creeping (if highly uneven) return of faith in the ability of public authorities to do better than private world-makers, alongside the ongoing discrediting of the tech saviours who enjoyed such a gullible audience in the early years of the millennium."
—The New Statesman
“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.”
—Sonia Shah, author of The Next Great Migration
“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.”
—D. D. Guttenplan, editor, The Nation
"Bill and Melinda Gates were always hailed as a perfect couple before the reality turned out to be different. Is their reputation as the world's perfect philanthropists about to be similarly destroyed?"
—The Daily Mail
Schwab’s critique hits home when he details how Gates Foundation initiatives have misfired with little benefit from billions spent.
—Publisher's Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2023-09-01
How the Gates Foundation acts “a great deal more like Microsoft than Mother Theresa” and why that matters.
As investigative journalist Schwab demonstrates in his debut book, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has been mythologized as the ultimate good guy, albeit often by the very media and political outlets he has funded through his philanthropic ventures. However, the author argues convincingly that “the Gates Foundation is a nonprofit, tax-privileged charity that is acting like a private equity investor, venture capital fund, or a pharmaceutical company.” For example, the foundation “has positioned itself to see the confidential business information of competing companies” and asks charitable partners to give it licensing claims to their technology. Furthermore, Schwab notes, Gates poured his greatest sums into the foundation during two periods when he most needed positive publicity: during the investigations into Microsoft as a possible monopoly, and a spell when Gates’ personal life was in the spotlight. The author is most troubled by the lack of transparency in the U.S. involving not just Gates, but also the increasing number of billionaires with private foundations. These organizations are not held to the same transparency standards as public companies, government agencies, or political actors. This is true even though tax breaks mean that some 50% of every dollar spent by foundations like Gates’ is “public money.” Schwab sends a clear message to legislators that they must begin regulating the foundations they have left comparatively unexamined since the 1960s. “Our democracy is only as strong as we allow it to be and only as accountable as we force it to be,” he writes. Though the author extends his reach beyond Gates, he always returns to him, as “it would be difficult to name a more powerful, less scrutinized political actor than the Gates Foundation.”
An eye-opening look at the use of tax-subsidized money by private philanthropy.
