Our world never looked so dumb
The talented writers behind the `The Onion' peel away layers to reveal a collection of nations that just might make you cry.
When is an atlas more than a collection of maps and dry data? When it is written and designed by the crazed minds behind The Onion, that's when. The Onion is the wildly funny and popular news satire Web, print and video efforts of a team of writers who are as intelligent and insightful as they are gut-busting funny. They definitely score again with "Our Dumb World", an atlas that carves up the Earth into easily digestible pieces of sheer madness.
The book is very well designed and the tone is pitch perfect, giving it a feel of seriousness and credibility that one would expect in a real atlas. It all works to bring to light the hypocrisy, stupidity and cruelty that blanket so much of the modern world. Rarely is it so easy to laugh at war, poverty, famine and rampant ignorance.
While most of the humor is low-brow and crude, virtually every page also includes some meaningful message about warped values and priorities. No one is spared, from the high and mighty nations to the struggling basket cases. All are given swift kicks to the groin in order to provide laughs and enlightenment for readers.
"Our Dumb World" is well stocked with photos, timelines, pie charts and other visual gimmickry that impresses people who don't like to read. I like the line graph that shows the frequency of line graphs used in the book. My favorite, however, is the color-coded "Bono Awareness Map". Each country is tinted in accordance with how much the lead singer of U2 cares about it.
Mindless patriotic robots beware. Your programming may be unsettled by this book. Here's an excerpt from the description of the United States: "America is a place where even the poorest immigrant can, through hard work and dedication, achieve the American Dream for his employer."
The writers of "Our Dumb World" do not shy away from calling it like they see it, no matter how hard hitting or unpopular their analysis may be. On Canada, for example, they offer this burning insight: "Living in the shadow of its southern neighbor, the nation of Canada will never be as great as the U.S. so long as it continues to burden itself with universal health care, refuses to drill for oil in federally protected wildlife reserves, and neglects its duty to blindly support unilateral invasions of Middle Eastern states."
Please do not think that this book is entirely mean, negative, ethnocentric and condescending. For example, while it calls Panama a "shortcut with its own national anthem" it does praise Cuba for perfecting communism by "creating a truly equal society where desperate poverty is distributed evenly among all citizens."
The beautiful Bahamas, according to "Our Dumb World", is an "all-inclusive, full-service nation" made up of "hundreds of luxurious, foreign-owned islands fully staffed with indigenous pool boys, bartenders, and bellhops. Millions of visitors each year enjoy the nation's turquoise waters, endless sandy beaches and lavish resorts, all of which are strictly off-limits to the Bahamas citizens."
China, though controversial for its human rights and environmental records, is hailed by the atlas as the world's largest mass-producer of Chinese, having manufactured more than 700 billion of them since 1892.
This is not just rude joke after rude joke, however. Social awareness and compassion for humanity pops up from many pages. On Indonesia: "While it has struggled with poverty, Indonesia's close relationship with such world powers as Nike and the Gap has allowed citizens to provide a much higher standard of living for Western consumers tired of low-quality T-shirts."
If political correctness is your thing you won't like this book. My advice is that anyone missing the humor gene should steer well clear of "Our Dumb World". Anyone who rates former U.S president George W. Bush as a great leader, for example, might want to pass as well. You either won't get the jokes or smoke will come out of your ears before you make it to page 15. I suggest you buy something by Ann Coulter instead. On second thought, however, the sort of people who wouldn't find any of this stuff funny are the very people who need it most. Maybe sometimes humor can reach where logic and reason can't.
The section on Africa is crafted to perfection. The writers hit the perfect mix of satire, ridicule and social commentary. As one who has been to Africa, written about poverty and violence there for many years, I was not put off by the humor. In fact, given the attention span of today's public, it could probably do a better job of raising awareness about Africa's problems than a hundred op-ed columns in the New York Times ever could.
This book is not delicate or respectful but it does entertain and inform. It just might even be able to improve some demented and negative worldviews. So, if you want a better world, one with a lot more compassion and common sense, then buy a copy of "Our Dumb World" today and give it to a jerk!
--Guy P. Harrison, author of:
Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity
and
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God
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Fewer clouds on maps
Have a quick flick through this book and you might think it was a Dorling Kindersley world gazeteer. It has all the DK appeal: well produced maps and state flags, interesting photos plus very clean layouts and typography but as soon as you start to read the words you realise you're on planet Onion.The two hundred and two countries mostly get a page each with two pages given to topical (in the American sense) nations like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba for instance. Pages 207-209 covers The Stans: Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan. Did you know this last nation has a space programme? Probably not but there is a photo of a rocket strapped to the back of a donkey to prove it.The two pages on Nigeria kick off with a page email: REQUEST FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE. Dear Reader, WE NEED YOUR HELP May the blessing of God be... and so on in the usual 419 scam prose. The sub-head under Chile says: 'Preventing Argentina From Enjoying The Pacific Ocean Since 1818'. It's this offbeat quirky copy that has made The Onion rightly famous and this book contains page after page of it.As with a real atlas you're not meant to read it all but this is one of the Onion's better efforts and with its high production values I think this will be a well-thumbed book.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2009
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2008
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Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2016
Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
I have bought this book twice for my dad (it ...
Reviewed in Canada on April 7, 2016B. F.
Großartiger Atlas unserer "dummen" Welt
Reviewed in Germany on December 6, 2012
Dr. George Sik
Get this on the National Curriculum now!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2007Richard Dymond
Very funny, for both geography buffs and for those who ...
Reviewed in Canada on May 16, 2017