Book Review: Factfulness

Factfulness
Author: Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Ronnlund
Reviewed by me

Genre: Non-Fiction
Topic: Misconception of the world

Summary:
Factfulness is written in Han's voice. He's a scholar from Sweden who specialize in statistics, medicine, and public health. A doctor, TED speaker, adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Hans was listed as one of the 100 leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy 2009, one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company 2011, and 100 most influential people by Time magazine 2012.

Based on the polling results from Hans 13 multiple choice fact questions, the majority of people knew less about the world than chimpanzees. Han's vision was to "eradicate ignorance" and to "upgrade" people's worldview knowledge. His goal is to change people's way of thinking from fear-based to fact-based. When it comes to global trends, the most positive answer is the correct answer, says Hans.

Hans figured that the major problem was because people are attracted to drama and tend to dramatize news about war, violence, natural disasters, corruption, and other bad news. Most people think the world is getting worse when actually the world is improving every single year.

In the last 20 years, extreme poverty is almost halved. Human life expectancy has increased to 70 years. The world population growth curve is expected to flatten between 10-12 billion people by the end of the century not because of more babies, but because of more adults due to better living wages and education.

Hans suspect if people wrongly believe that nothing is improving they may conclude that nothing we have tried so far is working and lose confidence in measures that actually work. Hans says that the progress in global trends give people hope and encourages them to work hard to reach their goals. It's important to control the negative instinct without dismissing the fact that more work has to be done. In Hans point of view, the world is both bad and better, at the same time.

Opinions:

• Hans use four levels of income to group people and most people are in level 4 with access to technology/secondary education/cars/homes with plumbing and electricity, however I believe there should be a level 5 for business owners/celebrities/politicians/doctors/millionaires. 
• Hans expresses many of his own personal political views in this book that may offend many readers. Instead of presenting both sides, he writes as if his views are obviously the right views and everyone else is wrong. 
• Hans shares his experience in Mozambique where he argued that it's unethical to spend all of his time and resources to save those that come to the hospital. Instead he could save more lives by improving the services outside of the hospital. I think his view is bias and insensitive since he is disregarding the pain and suffering of the patients. Yes, it is important to prevent diseases, however it's arguably as important to care for patients who are ill and in need of immediate medical care.
• Hans argue against cultural traditions. He says that certain values like gender roles and patriarchal is found in all nations and that these values "will vanish, just as they did in Sweden". I disagree, I believe cultural traditions are honored and practice throughout generations and though will be less dominate in normal modern life, I still believe cultural traditions will affect an individual's values based on how they were raised and their family dynamics.