Review by New York Times Review
FACTFULNESS By Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. (Flatiron, $27.99.) Rosling, who died last year, was an expert on international health who lamented the information bubbles that he feared surrounded too many of us. Burst them, he argues in this book, and our general pessimism about the state of the world will also ease - things are much better than they seem. Neapolitan chronicles By Anna Maria Ortese. (New Vessel, paper, $16.95.) This collection of writing and reportage about Naples was a major inspiration for Elena Ferrante. Ortese's portrait of the Italian city just after World War II is of a place of poverty and desperation, lear By Harold Bloom. (Scribner, $24.) Bloom's understanding of Lear as a character has shifted with age, allowing him to appreciate aspects of the old king he couldn't see at 17 or 40. This focused study showcases the erudition of one of our most eminent Shakespeare scholars, the kremlin ball By Curzio Malaparte. (New York Review, paper, $15.95.) This is a glimpse of 1920s Moscow, among the Soviet high society It's the aftertaste of the revolution. Published posthumously, Malaparte's court chronicle captures Stalin as the surveyor of every intrigue and scandal from his nightly opera box. the view from flyover country By Sarah Kendzior. (Flatiron, paper, $12.99.) A St. Louis-based journalist, Kendzior has been called "a Cassandra in Trumpland," analyzing in these short essays the social trends and discontent in Middle America that built the president's base. "When I drove to Spring Green, Wis., for a reporting trip recently, I expected to see Frank Lloyd Wright's influence sprinkled throughout the bucolic valley that he considered his home, a place I hadn't visited since I was a child. I hadn't realized that Wright's inspiration seemed to touch nearly everything there: the design of houses tucked into grassy slopes, a former bank's drive-through lanes, the prairie-style sconces in the hallways of a tiny elementary school. So when I returned home, I (perhaps a little belatedly) turned to frank lloyd wright, a 2004 biography by Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic. Hers is one of many biographies on Wright, whose cinematic, brilliant life makes for incredibly rich reading. Huxtable skillfully weaves together the tales of Wright as a seductive, obsessive young architect in booming late-19th-century Chicago, where he rubbed shoulders with Jane Addams and Daniel Burnham; his scandalous personal behavior and indifference to his small children (he apparently loathed the sound of the word 'papa'); and the debts, broken relationships, tragedy and lasting acclaim that followed." - JULIE BOSMAN, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, ON WHAT SHE'S READING.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 16, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
Sure to grab attention with its catchy subtitle, this book by the late academic, statistician, and TED Talk star explains in plain prose how and why the most intelligent among us hold mistaken beliefs about important worldwide issues like poverty, education, population, demographics, health, and the environment. This is no academic treatise; Rosling uses simple charts and graphs to turn years of data into easily understandable evidence that contradicts erroneous mainstream ideas about overpopulation, undereducation of women in developing countries, vaccinations among the poor, the lethality of natural disasters, and climate change. In an accessible, almost folksy prose, Rosling identifies various reasons why so many of us have ended up with so many faulty ideas about our world. These reasons are the crux of the book and cannot be reduced to aphorisms, but they involve issues like negativity, fear, generalization, blame, urgency, and destiny. Each chapter ends with a page of bullet-point summaries and motivational advice for the future. His final advice is to teach our children humility, curiosity, and a fact-based worldview. Recommended for all libraries.--Tosko, Michael Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An influential thought leader puts a positive spin on global awareness.In his posthumous collaborative book poised to "fight devastating ignorance with a fact-based worldview," Swedish physician, global health lecturer, and academic statistician Rosling (1948-2017) parts the dingy curtains of global pessimism to reveal an alternate and uplifting perspective on the state of world issues today. Co-written with Rosling's son and daughter-in-law, the book effectively educates, uplifts, and reassures readers through chapters reinforced by focused, statistically sound research studies. Rosling presents 10 theoretical concepts, or "instincts," which are basic human impulses that often cause the general public to misinterpret and hyperbolize critical information about the contemporary world. Among the behaviors he cites that drive people to manifest an "overdramatic worldview" are the tendency to divide everything into two aspects ("us vs. them," the "developing" vs. the "developed" world), blaming one indicator for a myriad of troubles, and cultivating a negative mindset. Adding to the dynamically designed presentations of charts, images, data analysis, and personal anecdotes, the author also breaks up his succinct chapters with humor and common-sense reasoning bolstered by statistical data. Multiple choice questions on world knowledge are sure to surprise and enlighten readers curious about their own awareness levels and susceptibility to rush judgments, misconceptions, and defeatist mindsets. With unfailing optimism, Rosling administers a fact-based antidote to apocalyptic statistics like world population overgrowth, rampant infant deaths, and soaring crime rates, none of which are ballooning out of control but are fearfully perceived as such. He also examines five pressing real-world "risks" that demand attention: poverty, global warming, financial collapse, global pandemic, and a catastrophic third world war. In compelling readers to comprehend the positive aspects of world changes using practical thinking tools, Rosling delivers a sunny global prognosis with a sigh of relief.An insistently hopeful, fact-based booster shot for a doomsaying, world-weary population. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
