Marshmallow reviews Information is Beautiful by David McCandless

In June, Marshmallow reviewed Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless, a beautiful book full of inspiring and visually stimulating infographics. Today she reviews an earlier book by David McCandless: Information is Beautiful, originally published in 2009 and revised in 2012.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like non-fictional books that are interesting and eye-opening, then this is the book for you!

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): A few weeks ago, I reviewed another book by David McCandless called Beautiful News. This book is a little different though. The author explains in the introduction:

“I went for subjects that sprang from my own curiosity and ignorance […] So, that’s what this book is. Miscellaneous facts and ideas, interconnected visually. A visual miscellaneum. A series of experiments in making information approachable and beautiful.”

That pretty much sums up this book! Every page (like the other book) is full of vivid colors, smooth and sharp shapes, and fascinating data.

One of the pages that stood out to me most contained a colorful spiral of increasingly smaller circles; each circle contained a cause of death and the chance of it occurring to you. Essentially, as you read closer to the center of the spiral, you see rarer and rarer ways of dying which was definitely interesting, but also terrifying. For some reason it felt like one of those choose-your-own-way books but a Wednesday Addams edition.

Another, less morbid and more cheerful page announced the most popular U.S. girls’ names–the following spread was about the most popular boy names too. Unfortunately, I didn’t see Marshmallow at the top.

I did really like one page that shows the global map and then covers what is succinctly described as “Man’s Humanity to Man” (philanthropy, free education, and other great things!) For example, I liked how it highlighted some bloodless revolutions like the Serbian Bulldozer Revolution in 2000. Not all the details are given, but I did learn a little bit about some things I didn’t know anything about.

Marshmallow’s Review: Information is Beautiful is simply a beautiful book. I loved how every page is extremely visually appealing. That is definitely a reason to read the book on its own. I’m sure it would be a really fun picturebook for small bunnies! I did think it was interesting how the cover of this one is grayish and definitely less colorful than that of the other book of McCandless that I had reviewed earlier. Beautiful News was more directed and had a more specific message: hope. Information is Beautiful, on the other hand, is more about exposing the reader to the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I really enjoy books that reveal the depth and complexity of the world we are living in—something that is so easy to miss when all our screens seem to promise an abundance of simplistic solutions to boredom. In particular, the book brings together a great many disparate topics, and that opens the door to a room for the light of curiosity to explore. Basically, if you are interested in learning more about a topic you see in this book, you can Google it, look it up on Wikipedia, and go from there. In other words, this book can really be viewed as a collection of random bits of information, but I think it randomness is one of its strengths: there is bound to be something interesting for any bunny who looks inside.  

I was a bit concerned about one of the displays called “Behind Every Great Man … Dictators’ Wives”. The display focused on the wives of the horrible dictators of the twentieth century, like Hitler, Stalin, Marcos, and so on. Honestly, I was disturbed by the title for the display, because these men were all terrible people. They themselves may have thought of themselves as great, but today historians would most likely not use that word, even in quotes.

But overall, I liked reading Information is Beautiful, and I appreciated the author’s goal to make information approachable and beautiful. But I must admit that I like McCandless’ other book a little more because it’s more uplifting. But this one is really fascinating in a different way, and I definitely recommend reading it!

Marshmallow’s Rating: 90%.