Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting Hardcover – August 31, 2020

This is an important book discussion important ideas. What's more, they're attractively presented. This is the kind of book you could proudly leave on your coffee table to spark conversation with your family or houseguests. And unlike many books of statistics, nothing here is dry or needlessly complicated. Rather, everything is simply and elegantly presented. Simply flipping through the pages, you'll find numerous graphs (each filling one page) opposite text offering some further commentary or explanation of the graph. However, the data visualizations really tell the story as much as (or even more than) the text itself.And the story is an important one: in general, things are getting better. Not everything, not at a steady pace, but on the average, there's a lot of good news. Of course, some of the individual trends identified by the authors as good news might not be universally praised as such. For example, two of the trends identify increased urbanization around the world and decreased capital punishment. The data are clear and well documented--these are genuine trends. Whether one finds city life appealing or whether one favors capital punishment may be more controversial.However, even with that caveat in mind, the vast majority of the trends identified in the book ought to be universally acknowledged as good things--decreased cancer deaths, increased nutrition, decreased infant mortality, increased literacy, and so on.If one were to nitpick, of course one could say that some of the trends are far more complicated than the book allows. This is absolutely true. While some of the trends are fairly straightforward, there are those with nuances not captured by the book's brief presentation. Even still, the authors did a good job of documenting their sources, so those interested in the trends could easily follow up. And we need to remember that this isn't meant to be a work of detailed scholarship. That kind of book has its place, but such technical works will often fail to reach the wider audience targeted by this book. Instead, this is meant to demonstrate trends in broad strokes and to spark conversations, and I think it will absolutely succeed in that endeavor.As a physical artifact, the book is a thing of beauty. Printed in full color on high-quality paper, the book feels good in the hands and the graphs really stand out. As "coffee table books" go, it's a little on the small side, and the tradeoff there is that the written portion of the book (interesting and important, though arguably less so than the graphs) is a bit small and might be a bit of a strain for some people to read.Ultimately, I feel like the book could have benefitted from being a little larger, a little longer, and a little more detailed with regard to the nuances of a few of its topics. But these are very minor complaints. I wholeheartedly recommend the book and consider it near-required reading for anyone interested in the state of the world.

Our world is in far better shape than the current administration lies about.

One star off because it was missing the dust cover. Otherwise great.

Shocking to find that with all of the doomsayers, the world is actually improving in so many aspects that it is criminal the information is not shouted from every rooftop, news outlet, podium, social media platform, and classroom. Pesky facts!!!!

An inspiring read, unlike many other books and news sources. Thoughtfully written with lots of data to back up what they’re saying. I enjoyed learning how many aspects of global society have been improving over a long time horizon.

If you ask people whether the world is getting better or worse, most people will say worse. This book completely refutes that. Compared to 50 or 60 or 80 years ago (and before) the human race is much better off. We are wealthier, healthier, and eat better. We have fewer wars and live longer. This is true for all kinds of people in all parts of the world. To take one example, the COVID vaccine was perfected in just a few months. It used to take years to develop vaccines. In the middle of the twentieth century, every child caught chicken pox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and many got polio. In today's world no child should ever catch any of these. Go back a little further and many people caught tuberculosis or small pox. These diseases have been essentially eradicated. In addition, many inventions we take for granted today didn't exist a few years ago, including the internet, cell phones, and Netflix. Who could live today without streaming video? So thank your lucky stars you live in today's world.

Well written, good citations, nice graphs, and a nice breadth of topics. Overall this is a great book which highlights alot of positive trends to put things in perspective. We really are doing way better than media would lead you to believe. There is certainly room for improvement in the world but this book helps us to see many of the remarkable achievements.As with anything the selection bias is for the positive trends so it conveniently ignores some negative trends, but I think that is the point (i.e. that there are some very significant positive trends that are too frequently overlooked). Well worth the read, thanks.

If you are one of those, and I know a few, made suicidal by watching the nightly news, stop thinking about doing yourself in and buy this book instead. There is probably no better book to read during times that seem as scary as these. Even though the title is Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know, the authors actually describe almost eighty important, fact-based, science-based, non-Panglossian trends that should give us reason for optimism. They include a clear-headed look at the world’s economy, poverty, non-renewable resources, population growth, food supply, deforestation, urbanization, and what many of us are now most worried about because of the threats made to it by our current administration: the future of democracy in the world.As the authors point out in the introduction: “Since journalism focuses on dramatic things and events that go wrong, the nature of news thus tends to mislead readers and viewers into thinking that the world is in worse shape than it really is.” This book offers a longer, more reassuring, and balanced view. I highly recommend it.

This collection of data trends is essentially a compilation of good news stories without much depth or discussion of complementary or countervailing issues. Often the trends are based on a single-source with negligible critical commentary. Its general, flawed, premise that future will be like the present, only more so.One example sums it up: the discussion of apparently reducing combat deaths. There is no discussion of the introduction of unmanned technologies, the role of irregular warfare or the impact on civilian casualties wrought by modern and future technology-based warfare on a greatly expanded battlefield.

Despite a few questioning the Data and its narrow analysis.. they miss the point. The indicators and trends are pointed in the right direction...!Keep up the good work spreading the good news

What a wonderful compilation of interesting and important trends. Certainly well worth passing around the title of this one to others, especially those amongst us with muddied impressions of doom and gloom for our world we live in.

Instead of comparing the current global situation to some imaginary fairly tale utopia, this book looks at historical data to paint a positive picture of where we are right now. A must read for every young person who thinks the world we live in is terrible, unfair or getting worse. Many people tend to forget the absolute brutality of the distant and not-so-distant history which we studied in school and view the past through rose coloured glasses.

Brilliant book filled with vital information