Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

I included the full title of this book because it's so incredibly incisive and important.  I wish everyone would read this important book by Swedish researcher Hans Rosling - a book that puts the modern world in context like nothing I've ever read before.

It turns out that the world is getting better on almost every front.  This trend has continued for centuries and shows no signs of slowing down.

The world is not perfect, and not everything is improving.  Global warming and terrorism are massive problems that will need massive attention to rectify.

But on almost every other key measure, the world is dramatically better than it ever has been before: poverty, the cost of solar, HIV infections, child deaths, deaths in battle, child labor, nuclear arms, hunger and so many more devastating realities from the past are at all time lows.

And so many good things are on the rise: Federally protected land, women's voting rights, literacy, democracy, child cancer survival, girls in school, access to electricity, access to clean water, access to the Internet, child immunizations and many others.

And these things aren't improving due to chance.  They're improving because mankind is getting better at solving problems, getting smarter, working together to solve bigger and badder problems than ever before.

Although the world will never be perfect, the book paints a picture of hope based on rational analysis and hard data.  Yes, big problems remain, but they can be solved as mankind simply gets better.

Rosling explains why we mistakenly believe that life on earth is getting worse.  Part of it is due to media coverage, for sure.  But most of it is due to human nature itself.  Many of our inborn instincts teach us to assume that things will get worse; that trends always continue in a straight line.  We needed those instincts to survive in the distant past.

But Rosling teaches us step by step how to recognize these instinctual biases and how to re-train ourselves to overlook them.

I downloaded the book because of a quote from Bill Gates: "One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.”

So true.  And I now see two other quotes about the book on Amazon:

“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

Fascinating stuff.