Factfulness

Entertaining, enlightening, if somewhat repetitive book which illustrates quite conclusively that most of us live with a very outdated view of the world, reinforced by media desperate to get our attention by dramatizing and sensationalizing stories that distort the slow steady improvement in key areas. One eye-opening example: that the number of people in the world in extreme poverty is now down to 800 million. The book is full of such facts, and it isn't a rose-tinted view. The authors don't ignore the negative, they just balance it against the inescapable positives of slowly improving circumstances. Recommended.

It was very resourceful to read this book and to adjust our tendency to bias facts due to exposure in mass media as we are living in the age of technology, fast-spread messages and news, that everything comes in a snap and we absorb them without filtering the knowledge through our brain first.

In my opinion, Hans Rosling has done perfectly well in awing readers with his straight forward and engaging, simple but clear language to deliver us the main theme throughout the book–we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, yet also by the history of humankind. It highlights the point where we should learn to view things in an up-to-date manner, and rather not judged by the fact or so-called leaps in technology advancement we've made–especially for the western countries, that western still dominates the world in a “privileged” way, ahead of all its rivals. Indeed, it continues to emphasise on the misjudge in facts, mostly based on the old facts opinions that were embedded among us and harvested to other ones as we grow up. Our world view is outdated. And yet we shall learn to change our view on that.

It is an incredibly useful book in proving common misconceptions wrong, alongside the facts and the uses of data that helps to establish another new level of understanding in the current global situation. Worthy to read.

“Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview.”
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What an eye opening book. An informal read full of interesting information. Before reading this book I would say I had a pretty good grasp on the general trends of the globe, but after reading Factfullness I realized I was basing my opinions and information on outdated facts and I was very far from the truth. The world is doing quite well and Hans does a wonderful job of relaying this idea with different topics and facts. He keeps you engaged and moves through his ideas in an almost story-like manner.