Hans Rosling

Anna Rosling Rönnlund

Ola Rosling

*the #1 Sunday Times bestseller * instant New York Times bestseller * an Observer 'best brainy book of the decade' * #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller * Irish Times bestseller * Audio bestseller * Guardian bestseller * * Endorsed by Barack Obama, Bill and Melinda Gates and Tom Harford, and Longlisted for the 2018 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year* The international bestseller by legendary statisticians Hans, Ola and Anna Rosling: inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world, and make you realise things are better than you thought.

The Ten Reason We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Factfulness

Natalie Noble

TLDR: it’s a book that changed my perspective of the world for the better and made me hopeful for the future

I think this book had such an impact on me because of the timing of when I read it. It was a few months into the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and much of Australia had just survived some of the worst bushfires earlier in the year as well. So the world was feeling pretty scary. 

This book really helped to change my perspective about the progress of the world. Especially as someone in my twenties it’s easy to complain about the pandemic being the worst experience of my life because it has been. But the emphasis needs to be on MY life. Certainly it’s the worst thing to have occurred in my lifetime but that in itself is almost a sign of progress. It’s the worst thing to happen in my life because my life has been otherwise easy and that’s due to all the progress that came before me. 

Life expectancy is much longer, I still have my grandparents but by my age they didn’t have their grandparents and their parents were not expected to live much longer. General health has improved drastically because we are eating better, living in better more comfortable housing, medicines are constantly being developed. 

Advancements in medicine, particularly the development of vaccines has saved and extended many lives. Writing this review now in 2021, I have already been vaccinated for COVID-19. I know there has been hesitancy about how quickly it was developed by that is the marvel of the modern world we’re living in. People from all different countries were are able to work together, share their findings in real time because of the internet. Before the internet each country and even state would have been doing things in isolation and the same mistakes would have been made hundreds of times across the world because we weren’t learning from each other. The collaboration and the access to resources allowed a vaccine to be developed faster than it would have otherwise been. 

Education has improved, human rights have improved, the number of people living in poverty is declining. In all the major areas things have improved and continue to improve. The progress is slow and frustrating sometimes but I think along the way we forget to celebrate the improvements. We are so focused on all the things that need to change when something does change we barely acknowledge the progress before we move on to complaining about something else. 

FYI my star rating scale (because I never now what the stars mean to other people)
⭐️ DNF or finished but I had to push through and hated it
⭐️⭐️ It was ok or I didn’t like it but it had redeeming qualities, wouldn’t recommend and will probably donate mine to local library
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Liked it would recommend but I don’t really remember it months later, staying on my shelf until I need more room
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Definitely recommend, it’s something that had impact and I could tell you about it months/years after I finished reading it but I don’t think I’ll read it again
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ LOVE, will absolutely read again

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

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