Fear – Trump in the White House
Written by Bob Woodward
357 pagesBob Woodward has been an investigative journalist for The Washington Post for almost 50 years, and together with Carl Bernstein he investigated the Watergate case which brought down Richard Nixon. He has won several award for his outstanding work, winning the Pulitzer prize twice. Woodward has written numerous books about politics and American Presidents. 
In Fear – Trump in the White House Woodward paints a picture of the Trump Administration that is not very different from what you get by following the general media. The White House is clearly very dysfunctional and nobody really has any control. There does not seem to be a concise strategy on how to implement the often contradictory goals Trump has set. 

Despite this the tone in the book is matter-of-factly and most of the people in the book are portrayed in a sympathetic light. At least some of the time. Even Trump gets his share of this. 
All in all the descriptions and stories in the book seem believable not to mention really scary. 

The story is told from a first person view, but Woodward was obviously not present in all these situations. He has based his book on hundreds of hours of interviews with people he will not name. I guess this is both the strength and the weakness of the book. 

Some people frequent the story much more than others. Vice President Mike Pence is hardly even mentioned at all. Woodward has obviously not spoken to him. Whereas several of the people who has resigned or being fired has more likely been interviewed. I would have liked the motives of the people mentioned being examined more closely. Why are they saying exactly what they are saying? How do they remember the conversations in question? 

Woodward shows in great detail that Trump is clearly not fit to be President. I think it is no coincidence that this book is published about two months before the mid term elections. 

Trump is portrayed as a childish impulsive liar who lacks a basic fundamental understanding of the world. He is easily flattered has a huge temper and is driven by petty vengeance and his advisers mainly deals with him with diversions and stalling. Several times they remove or hides documents so that Trump won’t see them. Trump didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s not what we did for the country,” Gary Cohn said of himself and Jim Mattis.“It’s what we saved him from doing.”
…
“Trump seemed not to remember his own decision because he did not ask about it. He had no list – in his mind of anywhere else – of tasks to complete.” 

The major issue with Trump dawns on you as you read the book. He lacks so much understanding of how the world works it is almost unbelievable. He also refuses to learn, he almost starts a nuclear war with North Korea, he insists on tariffs on steel even though he is shown that it will seriously damage the US economy, He insists that Iran is cheating on the nuclear weapons agreement even though they seem to be in compliance. No amount of statistics, facts, or experience from even his own advisors will do. Once he has made up his mind he will stick to it. For at least a short time until he is distracted by something else. 

“A third of my job was trying to react to some of the really dangerous ideas that he had and try to give him reasons to believe that maybe they weren’t such good ideas.” Staff secretary Rob Porter is quoted saying

If you’re extra interested in the inner workings of Trumps Administration I guess this book is for you. I look forward to reading the books that will be written about the total impact of Trump further down the line. Because this story sure isn’t over. 

Lets just hope the stories to come will be printed on paper and not etched on a cave wall with a piece of burned wood. 

Trump was asked if he wanted to contribute to the book directly, but he turned it down. A few days since the book was a week ago a taped phone call between Bob Woodward and Donald Trump was released. In the tape President Trump claims to never have heard that Woodward wanted to speak with him in the first place. This phone call basically support one of the central claims in the book and the final words as put but Gary Cohn: “He’s a fucking liar.”

Rating 6/6

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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)
259 pages

Hans Rosling was a swedish doctor, statistician and a Professor of International Health. He studied medicine and statistics and earned international fame for his fantastic TED-talks. If you haven’t seen them you should check them out. Here’s my favorite Hans Rosling TED-talk. 

Factfulness is basically Hans Roslings destilled message to us all. It is his legacy and his way of making an impact on the world. Or in his own words:

“This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.”
Hans Rosling, February 2017. 

We suffer from an overdramatic world view. This leads to bad decisions and unecessary stress. This is not only caused by ignorance, but most importantly by ten instincts that leads us astray. Every chapter in this book centers on one of these instincts. And also gives us some rules-of-thumb that we can make use of to curb our over dramatic instincts.

The book starts with a seemingly simple little quiz on world progress. Topics such as poverty, vaccination, the education of girls, mortality rates, average family size etc are covered. Rosling has testet thousands of people on his hundreds of lectures all over the world. Mostly all these well educated people do really bad. For the most part people do worse than what they would if chimps did the choosing randomly. Which is pretty funny. sad but funny. 

Among many things I learned that the terms “rich and poor countries”, “developed vs developing countries”, “the west and the rest” etc. are all bad categories and should be avoided. This is part of the first chapter called the Gap instinct. 
It has been replaced with four income levels in stead. 
Level 1 = < 2 dollars per day,
Level 2 = 2 – 8 dollars per day
Level 3 = 8 – 32 dollars per day
Level 4 = > 32 dollars per day

After many years of lecturing, the World Bank has now adopted this way of viewing the countries of the world. For the most part the majority of people is located on level 2 and 3. Now less than 10 % of the world population find themselves on level 1. As opposed to just a few decades ago when half the population was there, or not to mention the end of the 1800s when 90% of the world was at level 1. 
For the first time in history humanity is about to eradicate extreme poverty. 

When extreme poverty goes down, Life span increases. Family sizes drop and is now down to about 2 children per woman for a large majority of the world. Life expectancy has risen up to about 70 years on a global scale. Most people get 9-10 years of school and are vaccinated. 
This is not a made up fairy tale, but the official IMF and UN numbers speak for themselves. 

Rosling reminds us that things can be improving but still be bad. Which they are in several places. Roslings main method is to count the data. Always look for the data behind something. Many times the best think you could do when you are worried is to always look for the data behind a phenomenon. Especially if you are afraid (The Fear Instinct) or feel that it is urgent (The urgency instinct).

Emotions are important but they often times cloud our judgement and distorts our view of reality. They can make you believe that some one individual or group is responsible for everything bad happening (The blame instinct). If you are partial to one particular ideology you are partial to The Single Perspective Instinct etc. These chapters are all good, but just as the problems they describe they could be abit more nuyanced. 

“I am not an optimist. Im a very serious possibilist. Its a new category where we take emotion apart and we just work analytically with the world. “

Rosling singles out five major threats to humanity where climate change is one of them. Its common to hear “the third world can’t live like us. The resources on earth will be depleted.” The truth is that the we cannot live like us. Roslings message here is that we have to radically change our we structure our societies. We desperately have to do something with our dependence on oil and gas. To start with our governments have to measure CO2 emissions more effectively and use emission per person as a unit.

If you are thinking something along the lines of:
 “What about that quiz? I am better informed than most people. I bet I would do pretty good on this test.”
I suggest you take the short quiz yourself and find out how you do.
You will find the test here, with a short introduction from the authors.
And who knows.. You might be almost as good as a chimp.
 

I do get enthusiastic about books from time to time, but this time it’s different. The topic of this book is super important and should be taught everywhere. It goes great together with Steven Pinkers latest book Enlightenment Now (a review is coming). 

“Fame is easy to acquire; impact is much more difficult.” 
My prediction is that the impact of Hans Rosling, and Gapminder, will be with us for quite some time. 

Rating 7/6 (!)
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