Cato Institute’s Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know is a pleasant and welcome surprise. For starters, how often do you see an erudite think tank publishing a visually appealing coffee table book? More importantly, this one is full of seventy-eight trends that show how the world is improving in so many important ways. Population growth is stabilizing. Global school enrollment and literacy are up. Cancer rates are down. Democracy is expanding. Murder rates are falling. Food production is up. The cost of solar electricity has fallen. The solidly researched facts in this big book of colorful charts are the antidote we need to counter any amount of doom scrolling through the negative stories that fill our news. Yes, we have race and income issues to figure out. The remaining problems are more easily solved when we have more human capital and a positive trajectory to work with.
JP Snow 