Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures that Turn Your World Upside Down by Tom Standage

BATB score: 7.2/10

“Tsunami false alarm in Hawaii” was what’s on the news; “led to a traffic spike on Pornhub for a total of 20 minutes” was what followed, never reported, but discussed in this book with trend line graphs #sexy.

The daily news only got to cover the highlights, the top lines, and the 1 minute updates. By tomorrow, that news would have been yesterday’s outdated tale as old as time.

But if we had had more time to truly analyze what happened with economic facts, figures, graphs, and insights, there’s so much more than that breaking news headline that flashed by. This book is a take by The Economist publication to deep-dive into each understated headlines reported.

Best for: Serious curious questioners. Graph enthusiasts. ADHDs, Life-On-The-Go-Go-Go rope runners, or toilet readers who would love the 1-2-pagers analysis of each 1 headline; with more than 200 headlines to go through.