Book Review of FACTFULNESS: the Glass Really is Half Full
FACTFULNESS is as close to a must read as any book published in the past several years. I listened to much of it – something I rarely do but audio fits this type of book. I have handed out many copies. My wife insisted that her often grimly conservative brothers read it. The data and the stories that illustrate it are irrefutable. It is the great glass half full book. Does it make one feel better about the encroaching horror of climate change? No. Does it make one feel better about the rise of extremist thinking in the world’s democracies? No. It does, however, put everything we complain about or fear into a shocking perspective. Flying is the safest thing you can do. A citizen in India is now likely to live as long as a Southern white American. Population growth will soon top out. You are 10X less likely to die a violent death today than 50 years ago and 100X less likely to die in a war. The list is long – as long as the book. We should carry a crib sheet around with us.
My “ah-ha” moment, however, came while listening to how many people around the world no longer live in poverty and how many are now enjoying some form of a “middle class” life. I remember always telling my students “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” I still believe it. Longer lives, safer lives, healthier and more sustaining lives is the greatest achievement of the past 50 years. The cost is an unhealthy, straining planet. I am not sure we could have pulled it off without paying the price. It’s like a capital gains tax. We made a great leap forward, now we have to pay the tax. It makes it feel for me more palatable and inevitable than a wholesale recrimination of the human race.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better
by Hans Rosling (2018)
259 pages before appendices & notes … filled with great and VERY understandable graphs and charts. Very user friendly data.