The first in a planned trilogy of books about his life, Source Code covers Gates' remarkable childhood in Seattle, his brief stint at Harvard, and the early years of “Micro-soft” in Albuquerque. This is not the behind-the-scenes story of today’s trillion-dollar tech giant.

In his new autobiography, the computer pioneer and philanthropist writes of his origins, and about how, in eighth grade, he discovered BASIC, which introduced him to the elegance and exacting demands of computer code.

With his 70th birthday looming on this year’s horizon, Microsoft founder Bill Gates looked inward to open a window into the man behind Windows and other seminal software that turned the personal computer into a household staple.