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

This book is wonderful for anyone who is interested in numbers, facts and getting a better, more positive viewpoint on the world we live in. Spoiler alert – the world is in a much better state than we have been led to believe.

Hans Rosling, a doctor and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, died in 2017 and his son and daughter-in-law have continued his legacy and completed the book.

Rosling puts things into perspective. For example, 4.2 million babies die each year in the world. Whilst this IS terrible, and the goal is to have no babies die, compared to a couple of decades ago when 14 million babies dies, it is a vast improvement in living conditions around the world. He also puts into perspective terrorism, transportation deaths, girls in school, and debunks the ‘them’ and ‘us’ generalisation.

It’s a great read and one that left me feeling upbeat about the planet we all share. It’s written in an entertaining fashion, although relies on numbers and statistics. I recommend this book to anyone interested in debunking the negativeness we are bombarded with in the media every day.

Well done Factfullness.

Read with Gloucester Book Club. Thanks to the Reading Agency for ten free copies of this most interesting book of facts. It makes for the sort of reading you can just dip in and out of when you’ve got some spare time. It shows how much what we believe to be true just isn’t, and that the world is often biased. Put one on your coffee table and encourage friends and family to take a look! They will soon be hooked!

I was a little bit apprehensive. Would I like it? Well I loved it!! We need more books like this,more books with this way of writing. I thought I was quite well informed but this book showed me the bias that exists in everyday life, in the world. It is a very simple, easy to read book encouraging us to look at the world in a different, far more optimistic way. It will change the way you look at the world... in a good way. You must read it.

Macclesfield Library Reading Group Would like to thank the Reading Agency for supplying us with 10 copies of Hans Rosling’s Factfulness for us to read, discuss and review. The book created a lot of discussion and varied opinions; some thought that it was such a revelation they had gone out and bought copies for friends and family who had not been able to keep their hands off the reading group copies, whereas others struggled with the tone/subject matter of the book. The beauty of book Club is that it stretches the boundaries of what we normally read and helps us to discover new things.

"Parts became very statistical and lost me but I finished with a new found sense of optimism for the future world!"

"I loved this book! I do not do “maths” in any shape or form but I enjoyed the use of statistics in this. It had a positive vibe and gave me hope for the world. Hopefully real progress will happen slowly- maybe not in my lifetime but in my Grandson’s."

"This book is told truth. With women’s education comes decreased rated of child mortality."

"A very positive book- interesting to see if it’s influence can be measured!"

"I found it difficult to read and understand although I was interested in the facts about the world.
An interesting account of issues that have been a problem it is well-researched with clear figures and graphs that are good to look at."

"Hans Rosling writes with charm, humour, and optimism about human nature, to offer us a positive corrective to the “bad news” perspective about world affairs that dominate so much of our thinking. The book is easy to read for non-experts in any kind of maths-its goal is not to fill our heads with facts but to help us develop a more open and positive outlook.”