How I Learned to Understand the World: A Memoir by Hans RoslingMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
My prior experience with Hans Rosling has been watching a couple of his TED talk videos and putting his audiobook “Factfulness” on reserve at the library. I wasn’t sure I would like or appreciate his memoir, but thought I would give it a shot, having received a free copy for review from NetGalley. I ended up enjoying many of his stories. I especially enjoyed stories in two parts of his life. I found his recollections from running a hospital in Africa as a fresh-from-school doctor was enlightening. He faced many issues, learning to be a doctor while also learning how to work in this new-to-him society, with people he often didn’t understand. What he shares in these stories are the various times he has to learn from the people he worked with. You can sense the admiration he has for his co-workers who helped him succeed at times, and to survive at other times. These are great fish out of water stories.
The other parts that I enjoyed were near the end, when Rosling describes how he happens across a way to explain a topic to his students that finally gets them to understand a difficult concept. He explains this to his son, an artist, and the son builds computer tools to further refine this framing of the issue at hand and to expand the ways it can be illustrated. Rosling explains that this way of handling explanations becomes the basis for his consulting, and allows him to grow in stature as a scientific explainer. This was a wonderful example of career serendipity, moving from medical doctor to world renown scientist and futurist, helped by an artist.
An interesting book on an interesting life. After reading this, I look forward to reading “Factfulness” and will be focused on understanding how he illustrates his concepts and statistics.
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