THE BILL GATES PROBLEM: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire THE GOOD BILLIONAIRE Bill Gates, a Reintroduction

This is the first book-length investigation of The Gates Foundation ever published and the first serious biography of Gates in more than a decade. The focus is the former, The Gates Foundation, but one can't separate the foundation from the man.

We all know and may admire Bill Gates, and many of us take for granted that he's saving the world, but what do we really know about his charity? His private foundation operates outside of any governance structure and has managed to escape checks or balances from Congress and journalists. Gates donates so much money to universities that academic researchers refer to a “Bill Chill”—a reluctance to criticize Gates for fear of losing his patronage. And Bill Gates has managed to become a celebrated and leading voice in the pandemic response (and myriad other areas of public policy), not as an elected leader or public official, but as a private-sector billionaire.

In short, Bill Gates is one of the most powerful, least scrutinized actors in global politics. The Good Billionaire puts a long-overdue critical lens on Gates, investigating how he has turned charitable giving into political influence—-shaping how we educate American children, grow food in Africa, and manage the coronavirus pandemic. Schwab's reporting reveals billions of dollars in dark money at the Gates Foundation, a welter of conflicts of interest related to Big Pharma, and a constellation of controversial, high-profile figures surrounding the charity, including Jeffrey Epstein.

At the center of the book is one of the most widely recognized and admired celebrities in the world, but also a deeply flawed and polarizing man—a far more complex character than the superhero we constantly encounter in the news. The Good Billionaire offers a character-driven story that speaks to a vital political debate around economic inequality and the erosion of democratic institutions—the ability of the super-rich to transform their wealth into political power in ways the rest of us cannot.

Schwab has written several feature articles on the topic for The Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review, and for The British Medical Journal. The Nation recently nominated his series on the Gates Foundation for a number of journalism awards, including the National Magazine Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the George Polk awards, the Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize, the Izzy Award, and several others.