50 Facts That Should Change the World

by Jessica Williams

Overview

In this new edition of her bestseller, Jessica Williams tests the temperature of our world and diagnoses a malaise with some shocking symptoms. Get the facts but also the human side of the story on the world's hunger, poverty, material and emotional deprivation; its human rights abuses and unimaginable wealth; the unstoppable rise of consumerism, mental illness, the drugs trade, corruption, gun culture, the abuse of our environment and more. The prognosis might look bleak, yet there is hope, Williams argues, and it's down to us to act now to change things.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848312654
Publisher:	Icon Books, Ltd. UK
Publication date:	08/02/2007
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	565 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jessica Williams is a journalist and former television producer for the BBC, where she has researched and produced interviews with such diverse figures as the political philosopher Noam Chomsky, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Sir David Attenborough, Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble, and the late American academic Edward Said.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
	The average Japanese woman can expect to live to be 84. The average Botswanan will reach just 39	3
	A third of the world's obese people live in the developing world	9
	The US and Britain have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world	15
	China has 44 million missing women	21
	Brazil has more Avon ladies than members of its amed services	27
	Eighty-one per cent of the world's executions in 2002 took place in just three countries: China, Iran and the USA	33
	British supermarkets know more about their customers than the British government does	41
	Every cow in the European Union is subsidised by $2.50 a day. That's more than what 75 per cent of Africans have to live on	47
	In more than 70 countries, same-sex relationships are illegal. In nine countries, the penalty is death	53
	One in five of the world's people lives on less than $1 a day	59
	More than 12,000 women are killed each year in Russia as a result of domestic violence	65
	In 2001, 13.2 million Americans had some form of plastic surgery	71
	Landmines kill or maim at least one person every hour	77
	There are 44 million child labourers in India	83
	People in industrialised countries eat between 13 and 15 pounds of food additives every year	89
	The golfer Tiger Woods is the world's highest-paid sportsman. He earns $78 million a year - or $148 every second	95
	Seven million American women and 1 million American men suffer from an eating disorder	101
	Nearly half of British fifteen-year-olds have tried illegal drugs and nearly a quarter are regular cigarette smokers	107
	There are 67,000 people employed in the lobbying industry in Washington DC - 125 for each elected member of Congress	113
	Cars kill two people every minute	119
	Since 1977, there have been nearly 80,000 acts of violence or disruption at abortion clinics in North America	125
	More people can identify the golden arches of McDonald's than the Christian cross	131
	In Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget	137
	The world's trade in illegal drugs is estimated to be worth around $400 billion - about the same as the world's legal pharmaceutical industry	143
	Nearly half of Americans believe aliens have landed on Earth	149
	More than 150 countries use torture	155
	Every day, one in five of the world's population - some 800 million people - go hungry	161
	Black men born in the US today stand a one in three chance of going to jail	167
	A third of the world's population is at war	173
	The world's oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040	179
	Eighty-two per cent of the world's smokers live in developing countries	185
	More than 70 per cent of the world's population have never heard a dial tone	191
	A quarter of the world's armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources	197
	Some 30 million people in Africa are HIV-positive	203
	Ten languages die out every year	209
	More people die each year from suicide than in all the world's armed conflicts	215
	Every week, an average of 88 children are expelled from American schools for bringing a gun to class	221
	There are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience in the world	227
	Two million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation each year	233
	There are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world	239
	Nearly 26 million people voted in the 2001 British General Election. More than 32 million votes were cast in the first season of Pop Idol	245
	America spends $10 billion on pornography every year - the same amount it spends on foreign aid	251
	In 2003, the US spent $396 billion on its military. This is 33 times the combined military spending of the seven 'rogue states'	257
	There are 27 million slaves in the world today	263
	Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. That's enough bottles to reach all the way to the moon every three weeks	269
	The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day	275
	Some 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year	281
	A kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to Britain emits five times its own weight in greenhouse gases	287
	The US owes the United Nations more than $1 billion in unpaid dues	293
	Children living in poverty are three times more likely to suffer a mental illness than children from wealthy families	299
	Sources for the 50 facts	304
	Notes	308
	Glossary	330
	Getting involved	333
	Index	338

Editorial Reviews

News headlines wash over us daily, but beneath these "major events" are the unnoticed daily occurrences that make up everyday experience. For much of the world, that experience is harrowing: A third of the world is at war; 30 million people in Africa are HIV positive; and more than 150 countries use torture on their own citizens. In 50 Facts That Should Change the World, journalist Jessica Williams explores the realities behind the neutral words of bureaucratic documents. A paperback original.