Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
By Hans Rosling
Publisher: Sceptre (Released on 3 April 2018)
Price Rs 324/-; Pages 320
Review: Krishna Kumar Mishra
This is one of the books that kept me really engaged for three days – the longest time for a 320 page book. Promoting a fact-based worldview, the late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling and his co-authors reveal the ten dramatic instincts and the key preconceptions that lead to us consistently misunderstanding how the world really works. So it helps anyone who wants to really understand the real facts of the world and how to look at the world. Bill Gates is absolutely right when he said this is the most important book he read.
Factfulness is a timely and essential book about the power of facts in a post-truth world. Here Rosling divides the world into 4 parts that are different stages of development instead of two- developing and developed. Most of us perceive the world to be falling apart. Rosling brilliantly uses statistics and visuals to show how most of us are ignorant about the world, and how things are a lot better than we think and improving even faster. Rosling explains how statistical illiteracy, media bias, and ideological preconceptions makes most people believe in a gloomy world view. He explains by data how positive developments are underreported, while disaster news is vastly over-reported. Factfulness has the power to shift your entire perspective. If you want to understand the world, read it!
IE&M Take
“Factfulness has the power to shift your entire perspective. If you want to understand the world, read it! It is very easy, and requires no prior knowledge about economics.”
This book is a treasure trove of evidence based reasoning; global statistics and myth busting. It is always good to be content when you have a clearer view – and here the clearer view the reader gets of how the world really is. Mark my words – when you’ve finished, you’ll be a lot wiser about the world and also feel rather happier.
