Knowledge is power. In order to solve the World's problems you have to know about them. Some of the most troubling ones covered in this book :
China has 44 million missing woman
More than 12,000 woman are killed each year in Russia as a result of domestic violence.
Cars kill 2 people every minute.
Global warming already kills 150,000 people every year.
Black men born in the US today stand a one in three chance of going to jail.
More people die each year from suicide than in all the word'd armed conflicts.
In 2005 the US spent $554 bilion on its military. This is 29 times the combined military spending of the six "rogue states".
There are 27 million slaves in the world today. ( )

There are some very interesting statistics in here, new to me, and probably under-known. The book is a few years old, so a bit dated, but largely still relevant; and it's competently written, broadly speaking.

However its main problem is that it doesn't interrogate any of these facts beyond their surface - and so you're left with a sort of Sunday Supplement article written by Naomi Klein. Compare this book to something like "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling, which fully justifies its existence. This book doesn't, for instance, interrogate the way these statistics are gathered, any problems therefore with their methodology, the assumptions and values that are implicit in their collection and reporting, the policy steps that may have been taken and succeeded or failed in the past, etc.

The point is most obviously made for me by the chapter which complains that "more young people recognise the McDonalds logo than the Christian cross". Well... so what? The chapter quotes Jonathan Sachs on "values" at length, before stating that "it would be terrible to think of future generations having nothing in their ears other than the insipid piped music of the shopping mall". Again... really? You might think so, but that is an opinion, not a fact. There may be a profound point there, but to justify it, it warrants some modicum of interrogation, rather than some vague anti-consumerist gesture at "shopping malls". ( )

A well-researched book that contains some frightening stats. It desperately needs updating, but is an insightful read nonetheless. ( )

Eye-opening, refreshing and scary. ( )

the stats in this book were really overwhelming, but good to know. it's a bit outdated as it was published in 2003, and i would really like to see this information with current figures. i have a feeling it would be even more depressing. but it was still a good book and covered a wide range of issues facing the world. i would highly recommend it. ( )