The main purpose of this book is to convince people to make judgement of the world based on facts rather than emotions. Rosling starts the book by asking ten questions about the state of humanity, and then explains that in almost every question, people tend to guess that the world is worse off than it actually is. He then goes through and systematically explains each question, why people get it wrong, and why the correct answer shows that things really are getting better almost everywhere.
I found this book very interesting, enlightening, and engaging. I am encouraged by his statistics about progress in quality of life, health care, and education (though in a few places, I think his interpretation of statistics is more "rosy" than the statistics themselves warrant). Still, I have come to recognize, as he states, that people tend to dwell on the the negative, and since I first learned about this book earlier this year, it really has altered my world view. Not only does he give encouraging statistics, but he also coaches the reader to adopt a more "factfull" approach to analyzing new data. I think this is an important skill and I will likely recommend this book a lot both at work and to my friends and family. (342 p. 2018)
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