Factfulness Illustrated: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Front Cover

The international best-selling phenomenon loved by BARACK OBAMA and BILL GATES is now available in a gift edition with the illustrations in color throughout.

"A hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." —Barack Obama

"One of the most important books I've ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world." —Bill Gates

"...Explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly." —Melinda Gates

Instant New York Times bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal bestseller


FACTFULNESS: the stress-reducing habit of only having opinions for which there are strong supporting facts.

Things aren't as bad as we think. Fact.

When asked simple questions about global trends—why the world's population is increasing; how many young women go to school; how many of us live in poverty—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, legendary statisticians Hans, Anna, and Ola Rosling offer a radical new explanation of why this happens, and reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. But when we let the bad news take on outsize proportions instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world.

And now, here is this special gift edition: With charts and photographs in color, and a larger format.

About the author

Hans Rosling was a medical doctor, professor of international health and renowned public educator. He was an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, and co-founded Médecins sans Frontières in Sweden and the Gapminder Foundation. His TED talks have been viewed more than 35 million times, and he was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Hans died in 2017, having devoted the last years of his life to writing Factfulness.

Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans's son and daughter-in-law, were co-founders of the Gapminder Foundation, and Ola its director from 2005 to 2007 and from 2010 to the present day. After Google acquired the bubble-chart tool called Trendalyzer, invented and designed by Anna and Ola, Ola became head of Google's Public Data Team and Anna the team’s senior user experience (UX) designer. They have both received international awards for their work.

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