A comic tour de force | Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition

Funny AND educational | Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition | The Onion

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	• Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition The Onion Little, Brown and Company, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 105 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The GREATEST book ever written

Occasionally, a book comes along of such great importance that to not buy it--even if it means letting your kids go hungry for a couple nights--would be a crime. In fact, it should be a crime, and I advise you to write your local legislator. Such a book is Our Dumb World, the Atlas of the Planet Earth from the Onion.

The seventy-third edition of this magnum opus offers an even more profound look at the world we live in than any of the previous seventy-two. Some of the new features are mentioned on the cover, including curvier latitude lines and 30% more Asia. And unlike lesser atlases, Our Dumb World includes all the continents, even the ones you'd rather not think about.

The featured maps for each nation are worthy of the Cartography Hall of Fame, should such a Hall of Fame exist. Even obscure countries like France have detailed maps which point out the locations of important sites and regions like the Institute for Pretentious Mustards and the sole acre of France that has never been surrendered to a foreign power.

Of course, a great atlas--and this is the greatest of them all--is more than just maps. There is history: did you know that in 1200, Japan invented karate to defend against invading stacks of wooden boards, or in 1968, it formed a tentative peace treaty with Mothra? There are cultural facts: for example, Ecuador has a Gross Domestic Product of $5.62 and tried to privatize the equator.

I would not recommend this book for children, as its intense brilliance may cause their small brains to explode. For everyone else, however, it is imperative that you buy this book (or it will be once we get that law passed). Sadly, Amazon's rating system restricts the number of stars you can give a book to five, which may be fine for minor writers like Shakespeare or Steinbeck, but inadequate for this book, which merits 1,356,298 stars.

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A comic tour de force

"Our Dumb World" is amazing -- it is one of the most consistently funny books I've ever read. It has more content than it seems, and takes quite a while to read, which I consider a plus. It keeps a sustained level of humor that shouldn't be surprising to any fan of The Onion.

Also, and I hate to admit this, but I learned quite a bit of geography from this "atlas." A definite must-read!

Funny AND educational

This paperback edition of the 2007 hardcover version of Our Dumb World contains "30% More Asia"! If only high school geography was this sarcastic and realistic, maybe Americans would know exactly where the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, or Jordan are, but as it is, geography is so dull that Our Dumb World brings a breath of fresh air and levity to our world. Laid out like a regular Atlas, you see the land mass, flag, facts and major contemporary details about each country.

Taking after their irreverent humor that their weekly newspaper elicits, with headlines that could read: "Florida fallen off Continental Shelf, orange juice production low, adult diapers high," this Atlas pokes jabs at every major country as you guffaw your way around the globe. Even the most uptight, humorless individual would read these pages and laugh. Everyone has heard of Palestine, but has it been thought of in the context of, "On 24-Hour Suicide-Bombing Watch"? Or Yemen & Oman, "Doing Terrorism's Grunt Work." These are all headliners that sum up a specific land mass pretty adequately with that snide Onion `we know you love reading us because we're such good writers of cynicism.' This book delivers a good belly laugh and perhaps even some education thrown in for good measure.

Armchair Interviews says: Beautiful layout, well written, and funny. A must have for your high school student; then you can borrow it.

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Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of The Planet Earth, 73rd Edition features incorrect statistics on all of the Earth's 168, 182, or 196 independent nations. It also features maps, including a fold-out world map at actual size. Readers will learn about every country from Afghanistan, "Allah's Cat Box," to the Ukraine, "The Bridebasket of Europe."
Today's news-parody consumer cannot possibly understand made-up current events without the context of fake world history and geography. That is why The Onion is publishing a world atlas: to help us.
Our Dumb World is an invaluable tool for any reader interested in overthrowing a weakened government in East Asia, exploiting a developing nation in Africa, or for directions to tonight's party at Erica's. It is a reference guide to 250,000 of the world's most important places, such as North Korea's Trench of Victory, the Great Human Pyramid of Egypt, and Saudi Arabia's superhighway, the Mohammedobahn.

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