Author:
Madeline Roberts, PhD, MPH
The final weeks of
summer often bring the ambivalence of looking for a respite from the
heat while also wanting to cling to the last bit of the season.
Whether you find yourself at the beach, poolside, or simply with a bit
of extra time on your hands, you may want a book on hand. We’ve
rounded up a few that we’ve been thinking about, and we hope they
spark your interest and thinking.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the
World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
In the age of
disinformation and misinformation, we’re revisiting a 2018 Hans
Rosling book for a refresher on the “the stress-reducing habit
of carrying only the opinions for which you have strong
supporting facts.” Published posthumously with his
daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund and son Ola Rosling, the
authors describe this book as “data as therapy.”
The book is
organized into ten human instincts which tend to distort our
perceptions of the world. Each chapter concludes with a succinct
description that brings “factfulness” to bear on the erroneous
instinct. For example, the size instinct makes numbers in
isolation impressive; “to control the size instinct, get things
in proportion.”
Rosling writes,
“I'm a very serious "possibilist". That's something I made up.
It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears
without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic
worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it
fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is
possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and
reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview
that is constructive and useful."
Also, watch Hans
Rosling encourage his audience to “think beyond the obvious” as
he
swallows a Swedish army bayonet near the end of his TED talk
“New Insights on Poverty” (around minute 17:20).
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The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most
Terrifying Epidemic—and How it Changed Science, Cities and the
Modern World
by Steven Johnson
If you’re an
epidemiology enthusiast or want to renew your active
appreciation for the marvel that is sanitation infrastructure,
this is your book. Regarded as the father of modern
epidemiology, one of the original geospatial analysts, and the
exemplar of Intro Epidemiology classes, John Snow is the
original epidemiology icon. The Ghost Map brings his
story alive in technicolor within the context of the 1854 London
cholera outbreak. Author Steven Johnson humanizes a historic
outbreak and weaves together
Victorian newspaper and
magazine reports, disease transmission theories old and new,
and vivid literary descriptions of what the streets of London
were like in the Victorian era from Charles Dickens and Henry
Mayhew.
Johnson added an
afterword in 2023 reflecting on COVID in view of the 1854
cholera epidemic. He underscores that even in the face of COVID
denialism, the evidence indicates that we are learning from this
epidemic, citing mRNA vaccines and the controversial lockdowns.
Considering the
entire history of disease and human response, he offers an
interesting perspective: “The period from March 2020 to May 2020
almost certainly marked the most significant short-term change
ever in worldwide human behavior. Vast sections of the planet
effectively froze in place…and then adopted a whole new set of
routines to flatten the curve and slow the spread—a genuinely
new trick for Homo sapiens. It was not obvious in advance that
such a thing was even possible.”
This book also
serves as a sobering reminder that an estimated
40% percent of the world still lacks sanitation facilities,
which puts a considerable proportion of the global population at
risk for myriad infectious diseases. Safely managed sanitation
is one of the most basic and powerful interventions to advocate
for and work toward.
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The Obstacle is the Way
by Ryan Holiday
“The
things which hurt, instruct.” Benjamin Franklin
“Bad
companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them.
Great companies are improved by them.” Andy Grove, former CEO of
Intel
Although more of
a business or personal development book, The Obstacle may
also offer some perspective for the post-pandemic public health
reorg in which we find ourselves. To navigate crises, Holiday
outlines Stoic principles such as ruthlessly objective thinking
and purposeful action as the path to resilience. He repeatedly
reminds that it is possible for opportunity to present itself in
the form of overwhelming obstacles.
There is likely
some measure of selection bias in the presented case studies and
historical anecdotes of successful people, and, at times, The
Obstacle felt trite and in the
pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps genre. However, it also
advocates for viewing problems and challenges as opportunities
rather than threats. One of the primary benefits of remaining
objective is that removing emotions and reputation from
consideration allows a broader domain of solutions and actions
to emerge by eliminating the need to save face.
Public health,
both as an entity and as a collection of individual
professionals, is recovering from an extraordinary ordeal.
The Obstacle urges readers to “[understand] our problems for
what’s within them and their greater context,” and to have “an
eye for opportunity and pivotal moments.” And surely there has
not been a more pivotal moment for public health in recent
history.
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