HOW I LEARNED TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD

Swedish physician Rosling looks back on the surprising turns his life took.

When he died of pancreatic cancer in 2017, Rosling was in the process of co-writing two books, the bestselling Factfulness (2018), with his son and daughter-in-law, and this one, with journalist Härgestam, who recorded and gave form to his memories. In this English-language version of a book first published in Sweden in the year of his death, the author’s widow writes, “some of the stories are left out, as we thought these would only be interesting in the Swedish context.” Though the omissions will leave some wondering about gaps in the narrative, the text offers plenty of fascinating storytelling. With quiet humor and a bemused sense of amazement at the course of his life, Rosling describes his childhood, when he nearly drowned in a drainage ditch in his rural town; training as a physician, marriage, and the births of his children; years working as a physician in Mozambique; and transformation from clinical practitioner to researcher and academic. Most intriguing are accounts of the author’s attempts to solve puzzles, as when he was confronted in Mozambique by an epidemic of patients whose legs were paralyzed, which he eventually realized was caused by cassava plants that had been too quickly and improperly processed, leaving toxins in the food. Also absorbing are Rosling’s stories of his trips to Cuba, where he had an awkward encounter with Fidel Castro, and descriptions of multiple near-death experiences. The memoir, which includes many photos, stops abruptly just as Rosling was beginning to write Factfulness. While the volume stands on its own as a record of an unintentionally adventurous existence, fans of the author’s previous book should be delighted to get to know the person behind the statistician and abstract thinker.

A good-humored, understandably truncated remembrance of an eventful life.