Factfulness

Hans Rosling, the Swedish global health professor who made data-driven optimism his life's work, finished this book shortly before his death in 2017, and it shows — it reads like a man urgently sharing something he genuinely believes the world needs to hear. The hook is a quiz that reveals how badly most people misjudge global poverty, child mortality, and literacy trends, and Rosling walks through ten cognitive instincts that keep us systematically wrong. The prose is warm and accessible for a book built on statistics. The real caveat is that some scientists feel Rosling's upbeat framing underplays environmental crises and persistent inequality — this is optimism grounded in real data, but selectively chosen data. Worth reading with that tension in mind.