"This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance, and my final attempt at making an impact on the world. It has been my daily inspiration and joy. In my previous battles I armed myself with huge data sets, beautiful software, an energetic lecturing style and a Swedish bayonet for sword swallowing. It wasn't enough. But I hope that this book will be. It is based on a lifetime trying to teach a fact-based worldview, and of listening to how people misinterpret and overdramatize the facts even when they are right there in front of them. My goal is to share with you the conclusions I finally reached which help explain why so many people, from members of the public to very smart highly-educated experts, score worse than chimpanzees on fact questions about the world - and how we can all do better!" When you ask people simple questions about global trends, they systematically get the answers wrong. How many girls go to school? What's the average life expectancy across the world? What will the global population will be in 2050? Do the majority of people live in rich or poor countries? In Factfulness , Hans, Ola, and Anna Rosling show why this happens.

Based on a lifetime's work promoting a fact-based worldview, they reveal the ten dramatic instincts , and the key preconceptions, that lead us to consistently misunderstand how the world really works - and feel much more stressed about it all than we should! Along the way they tell incredible stories and reveal some jaw-dropping facts : the fastest drop in births per woman in world history went completely unreported in the free Western media; of the ten countries with the fastest economic growth in 2016, nine of them were not fully democratic; 30% of the world lived in poverty 20 years ago but only 11% do now. Written by Hans as he approached death, it features surprising, shocking, funny and poignant stories from Hans' life - from his difficult childhood in Sweden, through his work in Mozambique as a junior doctor in the '80s when it was the poorest country on earth and he was the only doctor for 300,000 people; to his later work wowing audiences of millions around the world. "I don't tell you not to worry. I tell you to worry about the right things. I don't tell you to look away from the news or to ignore the activists' calls to action. I tell you to ignore the noise, but keep an eye on the big global risks. I don't tell you not to be afraid. I tell you to stay cool-headed and support the global collaborations we need to reduce these risks.

Control your urgency instinct. Control all your dramatic instincts. And be less stressed by the imaginary problems of an overdramatic world, and more alert to the real problems and how to solve them." Inspiring and revelatory, Factfulness is a book of stories by a late legend, for anyone who wants to really understand the world.