ILLUSTRATION: LESLEY BUCKINGHAM
Factfulness by Hans Rosling (Hodder & Stoughton, £9.99)
Do you suppose the world is getting better or worse overall? When Hans Rosling, a leading health expert and advisor to the World Health Organisation and UNICEF, asked people a set of simple questions about the state of the world, he was shocked by their responses. His questions included: In the past 20 years, has the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty remained the same, doubled or almost halved? And, what percentage of girls in low-income countries finish primary school? Across the globe, students, journalists, business leaders, politicians and the public consistently got more answers wrong than right. Rosling found our views weren’t based on how the world is – the facts – but on instinctive reactions because of the way our brains naturally work; they have evolved to have dramatic tendencies, causing us to jump to worst-case conclusions without much thinking or evidence. We naturally categorise the world into good and bad, hero and villain, rich and poor and us versus them. This type of thinking highlights differences, not commonalities, and polarises us.