How I Learned to Understand the World: BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

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The moving, playful memoir of Hans Rosling - Swedish statistics mastermind, researcher extraordinaire and author of the global bestseller, Factfulness.

This is a book that contains very few numbers. Instead, it is about meeting people who have opened my eyes.

It was facts that helped him explain how the world works. But it was curiosity and commitment that made the late Hans Rosling, author of worldwide bestseller Factfulness, the most popular researcher of our time.

How I Learned to Understand the World is Hans Rosling's own story of how a young scientist learned became a revolutionary thinker, and takes us from the swelter of an emergency clinic in Mozambique, to the World Economic Forum at Davos.

In collaboration with Swedish journalist Fanny Hargestam, Hans Rosling wrote his memoir with the same joy of storytelling that made a whole world listen when he spoke.

Reviews

Filled with his signature warmth and wit, our late friend Hans Rosling's memoir is an inspirational read about a life that touched so many. Hans' work focused on data and research, but as this book makes clear, people were at the heart of his story. More than ever, our world needs the lessons Hans shares in these pages: to be guided by evidence and to live with optimism that we can make progress. This book provides a dose of hope in difficult times. -- Bill and Melinda Gates
SELECT PRAISE FOR FACTFULNESS: '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
Wonderful . . . a passionate and erudite message that is all the more moving because it comes from beyond the grave . . . His knack for presentation and delight in statistics come across on every page. Who else would choose a chart of "guitars per capita" as a proxy for human progress * Financial Times *
A powerful antidote to pervasive pessimism and populist untruths. -- Andrew Rawnsley * Observer, Book of the Year *
A light-hearted but data-rich book, calibrates our view of the world and explains how our cognitive processes can lead us astray -- Steven Pinker * New Statesman, The best books of 2018 *

Author Bio

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 Medecins sans Frontieres 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.