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

Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling
Stockholm, 2018

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Most of what I understand about the world I learned not from studying data or
sitting in front of a computer reading research papers—though I have done a
lot of that too—but from spending time with, and discussing the world with,
other people. I have had the privilege of traveling, studying, and working all
over the world, with people from every continent, every major world religion,
and, most importantly, at all income levels. I have learned a lot from the
CEOs of international businesses and from my PhD students in Stockholm. I
have learned even more from women living in extreme poverty in Africa;
from Catholic nuns working in the most remote villages; from medical
students in Bangalore and academics from Nigeria, Tanzania, Vietnam, Iran,
and Pakistan; and from the thought leaders of countries on all income levels,
from Eduardo Mondlane to Melinda Gates. I want to thank all of you for
sharing your knowledge with me, for making my life so rich and wonderful,
and for showing me a world completely different from the one I learned about
in school.
Understanding the world is one thing. Turning that understanding into a
book is another. As always, it is the team behind the scenes who make it
possible. Thank you to each one of the dedicated and creative members of
staff at Gapminder who built the resources that I used in all my lectures.
Thank you to our literary agent, Max Brockman, for great advice and
support, and to our editors, Drummond Moir at Hodder in the United
Kingdom and Will Schwalbe at Macmillan in the United States, for believing
in the book, for their kind and calm guidance through the process, and for
their wise counsel on how to improve the book. Thanks too to Harald
Hultqvist for telling us we had to get an international agent, and to Richard
Herold, our editor in Sweden, for being an excellent adviser through the early
process and throughout. Thanks to Bill Warhop, the copy editor, and Bryn
Clark, for their input. If you found this book readable, it is thanks to Deborah
Crewe. She was brave to take on three authors with way too much material.
She listened hard to what we wanted, and then worked patiently and with
great skill, speed, and humor, turning our eccentric Swenglish into what you
have just read. Even more important, she was able to absorb our thousands of

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fact snippets, anecdotes, and rules of thumb, and help us to mold them into
one coherent epic. We are so grateful to our new dear friend.
Special thank-yous to Max, Ted, and Ebba for letting me spend so many
weekends and evenings with your parents, Anna and Ola. I hope that when
you read this book and see the work we have been doing you will forgive me
a little. And thank you for your own contributions: to Max (12), who spent
hours discussing research with me in my office and editing hundreds of my
recorded transcripts; to Ted (10), who took photos for Dollar Street, tested our
fact questions on his classmates, and went to New York to receive the UN
Population Award on my behalf; and to Ebba (8), who came up with clever
ideas on how to improve the material and design the artwork you see
throughout the book.
There is a phrase in Swedish, “stå ut.” It means putting up with, bearing
with, enduring, hanging in there. I hope my family, friends, and colleagues
know how grateful I am that they have “stått ut” with me so much over the
years. I realize that the way I work—the way I am—means I have often been
absent or, if not absent, then rushing in and out. I know that even when I have
been present I have often been distracted and irritating. I can be a frustrating
person when I am working, which is almost all the time I am awake. So my
thanks go to everyone I have the honor to call a friend and colleague. It is
hard to pick out one friend and colleague above all others but I must