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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates

“Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates

"Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

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“This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

From the Publisher

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Flatiron Books; Reprint edition (April 7, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250123828
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250123824
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1000L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 1 x 8.15 inches
Reviewer: Abeer Y. Hoque
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Educational and calming both
Review: “I didn’t see what I wanted to see. I saw what I was afraid of seeing. Critical thinking is always difficult abut it’s almost impossible when we are scared.”I heartily recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling and his co-authors Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. My bookclub picked it because the subtitle (ten reasons we’re wrong about the world - and why things are better than you think) sounded hopeful and we’re all hungry for hope. And I have to say, aside from all the ways Rosling shows how we misinterpret the world and how to combat our all too human instincts, reading it actually did have a wonderfully calming effect!Rosling outlines 10 basic instincts that plague our perceptions of the world: The Gap Instinct, the Negativity Instinct, the Straight Line instinct, the Fear instinct, the Size instinct, the Generalization instinct, the Destiny instinct, the Single Perspective instinct, the Blame instinct, and the Urgency instinct. I found myself guilty of almost all of them in very obvious ways, and probably the ones I didn’t recognize, I’m also playing out in some subconscious (to myself) way.“Stay open to new data, and be prepared to keep freshening up your knowledge.”I deeply appreciated being taught that there is no binary between "developed" and "developing" countries - rather a continuum from Level 1 to Level 4, each with its own set of challenges. It took the World Bank 17 years and 14 of Rosling's talks to stop espousing this false binary, so maybe it's not so shameful that it took me 45 years to stop doing it myself.Each chapter has a textbook-like ending with tips and tricks to deal with each of these biases. “Tips and tricks” is far too pat a way to describe the often simple, elegant, and profound advice he proffers. For example, his phrase “bad and better” is about being able to hold two conflicting ideas in your head: that the world is bad and that it’s getting better. So one could both acknowledge very dire problems as well as the progress and solutions that have happened and are to come. This is not to minimize the issues, but to understand how the world actually works in order to really change it. The benefits to this approach are: 1) be able to see the world or a particular problem more accurately and complexly, 2) devise and/or maintain effective multi-player multi-pronged solutions, and 3) act from a position of knowledge and power and hope rather than one of despair and stress.That last bit alone was validation enough for me. We live in a time that feels overwhelming and hopeless at times, and it was an enormous relief to be able to acknowledge our very real accomplishments and progress, as well as the proposition that some of what we’re doing is working - perhaps too slowly for our liking, but it’s working.For example, we’ve achieved enormous success in increasing child survival and almost all of it has been achieved through “preventive measures outside hospitals by local nurses, midwives, and well-educated parents. Especially mothers: the data shows that half the increase in child survival in the world happens because the mothers can read and write.”That last underpins Rosling’s oft-repeated mantra of education and contraceptives as part of the solution to eradicate poverty, curb population growth, and give people better lives. He calls eradicating extreme poverty a moral imperative and I can’t think of much better goals.“We should be teaching our children humility and curiosity.”Another example of progress referred to our disaster prevention measures and other modern indicators and technologies. Because of these, the number of deaths from acts of nature is now just 25% of what it was 100 years ago. Keep in mind that during that same time, our population increased by 5 billion people, so the drop in deaths per capita is even more astonishing: just 6% of what it was 100 years ago.Bangladesh comes up several times in the book, and not as a basket case as is often the case in the news, but as an example of inspirational progress. For example, after far too many devastating floods and cyclones and ensuing famines, the Bangladeshi government installed a country-wide digital surveillance system connected to a freely available flood-monitoring website. Just 15 years ago, no country in the world had such an advanced system. It has also improved its economic position drastically, going from a level 1 country (one marked by extreme poverty) to level 2 in just 4 decades.“Insist on a full range of scenarios.”I found myself giving the most pushback in the chapter that tackled environmental concerns, which Rosling readily acknowledges at the outset of the chapter as one of the most pressing issues humans face. Ok, so the total wild populations of tigers, giant pandas, and black rhinos have all increased over the past years. Is that a reason to rest on our laurels? Not that Rosling counsels any resting - on the contrary, his life is testament to an almost maniacal commitment to help the world’s young and poor and helpless. But I kept thinking: everything is horrible and our wildlife and seas are dying - we have to do something drastic now! Ironically, this was also the chapter about the urgency instinct, and how the now-or-never/either-or way of thinking is probably the wrong approach. Touché, Dr. Rosling.I took almost 9 pages of notes while reading Factfulness, and it almost felt like taking a (great) course. I wish I had had the chance to see Rosling talk in person but there are apparently dozens of TEDtalks and other lectures he’s given, online (sadly, he passed away just before the book came out). And I’m glad the waiting list at the library was so long that I ended up buying the book, because it’s one I will reread and quote and learn from for a long time to come.Factfulness was a breeze to read, written in a highly engaging style, and chockfull of personal anecdotes, statistical details, and global trends. I hope everyone reads it and feels charged and ready to continue changing the world for the better.“Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.”

Reviewer: Thomas Wikman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Understand the World Better
Review: In the book’s introduction there’s a test you can take to see how well you understand the world. According to the author most people do worse than monkeys randomly selecting answers. Even well educated people do worse than monkeys. That’s because we have biases or instincts that distorts our view of the world. I should say I did well on the test, not because I am a monkey, but because I had knowledge of most of the statistics in the book before I read it.Rosling discusses ten instincts; the gap instinct, the negativity instinct, the straight line instinct, the fear instinct, the size instinct, the generalization instinct, the destiny instinct, the single perspective instinct, the blame instinct, and the urgency instinct. Once we have been made aware of these instincts and how they mislead us we are much better equipped to understand the world. The gap instinct makes us divide the world into developed and developing countries whilst in reality nations are on a sliding scale from poor to rich and in general moving towards rich. Also difference within countries are typically more important. The negativity instinct, our tendency to notice the bad more than the good, causes us to ignore the silent miracle of human progress, etc.Rosling said something that resonated with me “the world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone”. The book contains a lot of interesting statistics that may seem counterintuitive to many people. Surveys show most people believe things have gotten worse for us humans. However, people are better off. In the chapter on the negativity instinct there are 36 graphs showing how things have gotten better (32 graphs on just four pages). Violence is decreasing, poverty is decreasing, infectious disease is decreasing, people are living longer. Here are a few things that a few of the graphs show:* The average length of life in the world has gone from 31 years in 1800 to 72 years in 2017* Children dying before their fifth birthday has gone from 44% in 1800 to 4% in 2016* The rate of undernourished people in the world has gone from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015, despite the world population doubling* Cereal yield per acre in the world has gone from 1.4 ton per acre in 1961 to 4 ton in 2014* Literacy has gone from 10% in 1800 to 86% in 2016Despite all the good news in this book he says we should still worry. The five things that concerns the author the most are the risk of global pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change and extreme poverty. He dedicates the next five sections to discussing those five concerns. However, another issue that he does not discuss is that as the human condition has gotten better that of animals has largely gotten worse. Not only are there fewer wild animals and less habitat for wild animals but with factory farming and other modern practices the quality of life for domesticated animals has gotten much worse. I know that may be outside of the scope of this book, but it was something that occurred to me.One statement in the book that may seem confusing but certainly is interesting is this: “There has been progress in human rights, animal protection, women’s education, climate awareness, catastrophe relief, and many other areas where activists raise awareness by saying that things are getting worse. That progress is often largely thanks to these activists. Maybe they could achieve more though, if they didn’t have such a singular perspective.”Overall, I loved this book because it is filled with clever analysis and interesting statistics. It is a book that will help you understand the world better. Unless you already know the facts and statistics presented in this book, this book will revolutionize how you view the world. It is also well written and well organized. I highly recommend this book.

Reviewer: Arthur Xavier
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Excelente conteúdo explicado de maneira simples e bastante ilustrativa. Este é o tipo de livro que planta uma semente em nossas mentes e nos faz enxergar o mundo de uma forma diferente. Leitura mais que recomendada.

Reviewer: ET
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book is 7 years old and more true today. So many bad news, so little time to not be fatalist. Read this and understand how humanity has evolved, read this and change your way of thinking and the way that others are trying to influence you. There will always be bad, but overall, we are getting better. Simple, base on fact and to the point. We lost a beautiful human being when the author left this earth, hope that some will be there to take the lead.

Reviewer: Avid Reader Robert
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: .....therefore not a book for those on the hard left and right. Well written and will make you think, and helps you avoid the FaceBook trap of I found an article that supports my view, job done. An employer of mine spend $30,000 US to put me through a Princeton course on CT, buying this book would have saved them a lot of dollars. A thought provoking and well constructed book..........

Reviewer: Antonio Ruiz
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Este libro te sorprende, te hace recapacitar sobre tu visión del mundo en términos económicos, sanitarios, de educación... sobre lo bien o mal que estamos todosnlos habitantes en términos relativos e históricos y lo hace con muchos datos sin hacerse pesado.

Reviewer: Umberto Diotalevi
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Devastante ha un impatto devastanteMolto bello perché mi è piaciuto molto il libro di Hans bravo scrittore svedese intelligente