Reviewed by Kristin
You know those online “articles” which promise to show you
“40+ Unusual and Fascinating (fill in the blank here)” and tease you with some
interesting image at the very top that you have to scroll through or click
through way more than 40 entries and you end up forgetting why you wanted to
read the article in the first place….?
Yeah, I’m a sucker for those.
Inevitably, the online article goes to some ad, or the browser
crashes, or I finally decide I shouldn’t be giving these shady websites the
clicks they desire. I really try to
resist clicking them, because I don’t actually want to waste my time reading
something that was compiled by someone who barely knows the difference between
“there”, “they’re” and “their”. So, I was extremely happy to find this book in
the Young Adult section.
Bonus: no ads!
I am a map person. I like seeing how the world is laid out.
Even when I was a kid I loved reading my social studies textbook to see which
countries produced what kinds of grain, who had nuclear weapons, and who had
the largest gross domestic products (GDP) of any number of things. I am still fascinated
by the fact that the standard Mercator projection map does not realistically
portray the size of the areas anywhere other than very near the equator.
Oh yes, back to the book at hand.
This book includes nine chapters titled: People and
Populations; Politics, Power, and Religion; Culture and Customs; Friends and
Enemies; Geography; History; National Identity; Crime and Punishment; and
Nature.
Do you want to know the average person’s height in a specific
country? Which countries have preferences for cats or dogs? Which type of
electrical outlet can you expect to find when you are traveling to a foreign
country? Which countries have no rivers? Which countries have no McDonalds?
Which 22 counties has the United Kingdom not invaded? How many heavy metal
bands per 100,000 of population? All the sharks killed by humans vs all the
humans killed by sharks (in 2017)? Which countries have economies larger than
California? (Spoiler alert, only a few.)
This is the kind of information that I like to have tumbling
around in my brain. I might have very few instances in which I need this information, but it is
pleasant background noise as I go about my everyday life. And, pages 108-109 do
a decent job of showing the actual relative sizes of countries vs. how they are
shown on a Mercator projection map.
Intrigued? Find this book (with no ads) at YA 912 WRI.
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