Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Hans Rosling was a Swedish physician and global health professor whose TED talks made him famous for using bubble charts to explain world development. Factfulness, written with his son Ola and daughter in law Anna, is the book he finished as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. It argues that most people, including experts, hold a badly outdated picture of the world in which every trend seems to be getting worse. Rosling identifies ten instincts that produce this bias, including the gap instinct, the negativity instinct, and the fear instinct, and he shows how to correct each with data. The tone is warm and self deprecating, and Rosling insists that being factful is not the same as being naively optimistic. Sahil Bloom has recommended the book as one of the best clear thinking tools for anyone in a knowledge job.
What you might want to know about Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The late global health expert Hans Rosling lays out ten instincts that make people misread the world and shows how the data tells a more hopeful story.
Bloom has cited Factfulness in his newsletter as one of the books that most improved his thinking about the world and about what news he actually pays attention to. He recommends it as required reading on clear thinking alongside titles like Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Rosling insists it is not. He acknowledges that many problems remain severe, and he is careful to distinguish between things being bad and things getting better, which is the distinction the book is really built around.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think was written by Hans Rosling, published in 2018 by Flatiron Books.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
