Whither the Nerd-Bully?

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, was once the world's richest man and the defining figure of the personal-computer revolution. But his reputation has two sharply conflicting sides: the brilliant programmer and philanthropist who helped put a PC on every desk, and the ruthlessly competitive businessman whose company was found to have engaged in illegal monopolistic practices. This review of Kurt Eichenwald's "Microsoft: How Greed, Graft, and Greed Undermined America's Tech Giant" and a memoir by Gates himself re-examines that duality, asking whether the "nerd-bully" — a figure who combined geeky intellect with cutthroat corporate aggression — has mellowed with age or simply rebranded himself through his foundation's global-health work. The piece arrives amid renewed scrutiny of tech billionaires' power and the long-term consequences of the antitrust battles Microsoft lost in the late 1990s and early 2000s.