Hans Rosling channels his passion for fighting ignorance and creates a masterpiece in the book Factfulness: 10 Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.

The book begins with a series of simple questions: What is the life expectancy? What percentage of the world has access to electricity? The survey results highlight our ignorance, and even well-educated individuals score worse than chimpanzees answering randomly.

Hans Rosling, accompanied by Ola and Anna Rosling, tries to prove that the world is improving even though many think otherwise; they explain how statistical illiteracy, outdated resources, and urgency lead to our misconceptions. Factfulness uses data and anecdotes to dissect the causes of our common misconceptions; Rosling lists ten instincts that cause us to fail to identify and celebrate the ‘silent miracle of human progress.’

Rosling’s use of high-quality graphics enables him to make Factfulness accessible but also an informative read. In his chapter on the Gap Instinct, Rosling uses a chart of babies per woman and child survival rates to debunk the common misconception that the world is divided into two distinct groups, and he concludes that the terms 'developing' and 'developed' countries are outdated as several countries exist in the middle of the chart.

Rosling’s chapter on the blame instinct is particularly enthralling and uses historical examples of behaviours that are still relevant today. The rapid spread of syphilis led to numerous European countries blaming it on each other – the Polish, for example, called it the German disease. This behaviour is quite like America’s treatment of the coronavirus and how it was labelled as the ‘China virus’ or “Kung Flu’ to blame China for its spread. The chapter emphasises the problem blame causes and how it leads to us attributing more power than an individual deserves.

All in all, Factfulness is a must-read and will influence the way you see the world.