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His primary interests now are fighting poverty and hunger. Having a basic understanding of weather sounds like something nice to have in that situation, and if he spent the time in high school and college thinking about computers and businesses, a "for dummies" book might not be the worst place to start.

Interestingly, the first "for dummies" book was actually "DOS For Dummies" published in 1991, followed by "Windows For Dummies". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Dummies#History

Brushing up on his cloud computing.

Wow. Just the other day I was looking at the clouds and wondering how it all works up there and not some three-hundred word blogpost; seriously, why are there different clouds? The sky is such a big part of my everyday life, yet I know nothing about it. I searched around but couldn't find any good books on clouds.

This seems like a good start though. Mad respect for Bill.

http://cloudappreciationsociety.org

a lot of science books (chemistry, weather, etc), but no MSPress book and no computer literature?

For ending poverty on a global scale, wouldn't weather and chemistry seem like a decent place to start? Consider immunobiology and agriculture.

Also: I know it's a cheap shot, but I had a good laugh when I saw a book called "The Blue Death" on his shelf.

I assume it's only a tiny slice of his library. Inferring from the fact he's the world's richest geek, and that he's spent $30 million on a set of da Vinci papers,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester

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