How I Learned to Understand the World: A Memoir

In this lively memoir, Rosling (Factfulness), the late Swedish physician and public health educator, details his ascent to becoming a medical doctor, professor of international health, and public educator. Rosling (1948–2017) tells of his medical school education, which included an eye-opening 1971 trip to India, during which his worldview that “the West was best and the rest would never catch up” was quickly dispelled by his highly prepared Indian classmates, whose university textbooks had been far more detailed than his own. In 1979 he began practicing in Mozambique and was thrown into the chaos of researching a crippling konzo epidemic, while also instituting disease-prevention best practices for the country’s underserved communities. In 1998, his work took a new turn when he created a graph that used different-size, colorful “bubbles” to represent countries’ population sizes, then superimposing them onto a traditional graph. Its success in giving organizations a way to make large datasets understandable to non-specialists inspired Rosling to create, along with his son and daughter-in-law, the Gapminder Foundation, which builds data-analysis tools. Much to Rosling’s credit, the narrative remains accessible even as it travels through some complex statistical terrain. This deep dive into his impressive accomplishments will prove timely and engaging for healthcare professionals and anyone interested in health policy. (Nov.)