Tag: David McCandless

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 reviews Information is Beautiful by David McCandless.
Marshmallow reviews Information is Beautiful by David McCandless.

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 is reading Information is Beautiful by David McCandless. Here you see her viewing the two-page spread titled "The One Machine: Map of the Internet".
Marshmallow is reading Information is Beautiful by David McCandless. Here you see her viewing the two-page spread titled “The One Machine: Map of the Internet”.

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%.

Marshmallow rates Information is Beautiful by David McCandless 90%.
Marshmallow rates Information is Beautiful by David McCandless 90%.

Marshmallow reviews Beautiful News by David McCandless

Today Marshmallow chose to review a beautiful book of infographics by David McCandless published in 2022, aptly named Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions.

Marshmallow reviews Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless.
Marshmallow reviews Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you want hope (or if you simply like pretty pictures displaying lots of cool information), then this is the book for you!

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): In today’s status quo, things are looking grim. Everyday everyone looks at the news and sees only darkness. Every headline promises impending doom, but each one is terrifying in its own separate way. Isn’t it great!?! More seriously though, this is a daily occurrence that everyone, regardless of the news and media type they consume (CNBC, CNN, Fox, New York Times… they are all extremely depressing), experiences. This is mostly due to a phenomenon known as negativity bias. But no matter how natural, the end result is universal hopelessness and—quite frankly—rampant depression. Birth rates are falling as youth start to equate having children to condemning them to a horrific future. But amidst this barrage of fear, sadness, and anger (all of which is undeniably present and must be recognized), there is also hope. Hope may initially feel like a fragile concept, but this book helps back it up with statistics and data.

The author David McCandless has compiled exactly what is written on the first page: “positive trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions.” After the table of contents, each page or two is a spread of data, with brilliant colors and clear infographics (a portmanteau word smashing together “information” and “graphics”). The book is divided into sections based on what topic the information is about. The sections are titled as follows: health, cleaner energy, progress, climate, money, nice!, nature, mixed, freedom and rights, women and girls, what to do?, and cool tech.

Every page in this book is bright and cheery and truly provides reasons to stay hopeful. For example, one beautiful graph shows that “Far More Unites Us Than Divides Us.” Apparently, between countries, 84% is the percent average similarity in common values between groups. Between religions, it’s 91%; between rich and poor, and between education levels, and between age groups, it’s 96%. Between genders, it’s 97%. This is just one example from the more-than-200 pages in this book! At the end, there is also a map of the world and each country is labeled with something that makes it special and good. This book truly is a candle—like the author’s name—in the dark.

Marshmallow is reading Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless.
Marshmallow is reading Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless.

Marshmallow’s Review: I love this book! I have read so many amazing books, but this is my favorite one because it really embodies hope. I think I will definitely return to this book over and over again. If you can’t tell, I would highly recommend this book. I think it is great to read for oneself, but I think it could also make an amazing gift to a worried friend or source material to comfort them with facts to prove that there is always hope. (Here is one of my other favorite books about hope: I have already reviewed it for this blog. That was more of a narrative of hope however. This book just gives you proof! Colorful visuals and data! What more could one ask for?)

I was very small when I decided that hope is something one should always have, even when it seems false. What’s the point in giving up? Nothing is ever absolute. I think this book is really good because it shows that you don’t even need to follow that stubborn logic. There are reasons to have hope already.

I think everyone should be given a copy of this book. The only problem is that, being written 2022, the data is not the most recent. But the fact that most show trends of even longer periods of time is still encouraging. This can’t fix all existential dread or depression, but it can spark a bit of hope that can be nursed into a flame.

On this topic, if you cannot read this book for any reason, try visiting the Good News Network—an American online newspaper that focuses on good news only. So, in summary, I would highly recommend reading this book and treasuring it forever… but I would recommend keeping hope even more.

Marshmallow’s Rating: 150%. Yes, I am that excited about this book!

Marshmallow rates Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless 150%!
Marshmallow rates Beautiful News: Positive Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless 150%!