Factfulness – Hans Rosling

I initially picked up Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World by Hans Rosling (published posthumously) because it was on Barack Obama’s list of 2018 book picks.  In a world of “truthiness” (comedian Stephen Colbert’s term for falsehoods packaged as truth), the premise of Factfulness shines like a beacon.  Rosling and his co-writers lay out sets of data and illustrate that the doomsday tone of the news and even the “common knowledge facts” about the world that many of us carry with us are misleading and even false. The difficulty, of course, is that there is no one solid truth and any facts require a narrative to be meaningful. Rosling argues that the narratives we have been sold (and willingly bought) are not the most accurate interpretation of the data.  This hopeful book outlines the discrepancies in common understandings and gives an in-depth study of the data. Rosling’s point of view as a westerner, but non-American – he’s Swedish — gives a refreshing look at these issues as well. If you are in need of a more hopeful look at the world, but also arguments for ways in which it can be even better, I highly recommend this interesting and illuminating volume.