“Factfulness” by Hans Rosling  presents ten reasons why things are better than you think.  His “succinct and lively” book  ’throws down a gauntlet to doom-and-gloomers’ (Nature) —not bad for a statistician.  “Education”, says Arne Duncan in “How Schools Work”, “runs on lies.”    The former SoE unpacks that lede and makes a case for improving our public schools. “The Fall of Wisconsin” by Dan Kaufman tells how a state once considered a model “laboratory of democracy” underwent an extreme makeover.

*when you do something to check to see how on target you are