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.

"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!

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.

The writing is juvenile, pedestrian, and even mean. The writers try too hard to be funny. It is a stupid concept. I can't believe it got by a reputable editor. Don't waste your money unless you get it for a dime at a garbage, oop, garage, sale.

This book was just not funny. I think a bunch of seventh graders could have written most of the entries. I wish had not purchased this book.

If only high-school geography had been this funny! I bought this book as a gift for my brother and had to peek inside and couldn't put it down from laughing so hard! I may have to order another copy for my brother...Good thing his birthday is still over a month away!

The more you know about the world the funnier this book is. It spoofs cliches, ignorance and the world at large. Clever, funny and very entertaining.

I got this for my boyfriend's birthday gift. He loves the Onion "News" site, and was a Geography major in college (perfect, right?) I don't think there was a moment, until he was finished, that he wasn't carrying the thing around with him. He loved it, and I have to admit, I liked what he read out loud, too. It's great.

Perhaps a better title for this book would be "Our Tragic World." Very few of the topics discussed here are dumb or funny. For instance, the Balkan section shows Croatia as the country of land mines. "Where all roads lead to serious injury." Bosnia is the country of war crimes. "Everyone is guilty of a genocide or two." Serbia is the country of ethnic cleansing. "Guy with Croat still stuck to sole of his boot." Is this funny? Really? Come on.

My fiancé was born in the Balkans and raised in Croatia. Several of his friends fought in the war on both the Serbian and Bosnian sides. Two of his Bosnian friends from Sarajevo were forced to fight. So reading "everyone is guilty of a genocide or two" is really not funny. Not when someone you know has gone through it.

The worst part is The Onion doesn't get the facts right. Effective satire gets all the facts right and then sarcastically alters how the subject is approached. In "Our Dumb World" some of the cities are located in the wrong place or spelled wrong. At the very least, the info should be accurate.

I do understand The Onion's humor. I own 2 of their books Dispatches from the Tenth Circle and Our Dumb Century and they are hilarious. I recommend buying one of those 2 books, but not this one. They have written about war and poverty before and done a brilliant job of it. A good example is when they wrote about a Barnes & Noble in Cambodia. They managed to denounce the tragic things going on in Cambodia, while at the same time pointing out our ridiculous comforts in America. That was true satire and it was done well.

However there is a fine line between witty satire and insensitivity. This book crosses the line in an unfortunate way every time. Instead, I recommend one of the other 2 Onion books I mentioned.

Perhaps a better title for this book would be "Our Tragic World." Very few of the topics discussed here are dumb or funny. For instance, the Balkan section shows Croatia as the country of land mines. "Where all roads lead to serious injury." Bosnia is the country of war crimes. "Everyone is guilty of a genocide or two." Serbia is the country of ethnic cleansing. "Guy with Croat still stuck to sole of his boot." Is this funny? Really? Come on guys!

My fiancé was born in the Balkans and raised in Croatia. Several of his friends fought in the war on both the Serbian and Bosnian sides. Two of his Bosnian friends were forced to fight against the Serbs. When they put down their weapons in protest, their commander held a gun to their heads and said either they shoot the other side or they will be shot. Forgive me if reading: "everyone is guilty of a genocide or two" does not make me chuckle.

The worst part of all is The Onion doesn't get the facts right. Effective satire gets all the facts right and then sarcastically alters how the subject is approached. In "Our Dumb World" many of the cities are located in the wrong place or spelled wrong. At the very least, the info should be accurate.

I do "get" The Onion. I own 2 of their books (Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion and Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source) and they are hilarious. I recommend buying one of those 2 books, but not this one. They have written about poverty before and done a brilliantly satirical job of it. A good example is when they wrote about a Barnes & Noble in Cambodia. They managed to denounce the tragic things going on in Cambodia, while at the same time poking fun at our ridiculous comforts in America. That was true satire and it was done well.

However there is a fine line between witty satire and tragically insensitive. This book crosses the line in an unfortunate way every time.

This is at times an extremely funny book. Unfortunately, while its authors can find humour in Balinese nightclub bombings, the Holocaust, Sudanese genocide, Aids in southern Africa etc, it avoids making fun of major US calamities like the 9/11 attacks and high school/college massacres. Lighten up, Americans. If it's funny in Juba, it's also funny in Manhattan.

Mine never came with the "Free Globe Inside" promised on the cover, but I bet it was stolen from my copy which I borrowed from the library. It's a challenge to take on around two hundred countries, maps, flags, and funny little photos and keep you not only amused but educated-- at your own ethnocentricity, ignorance, half-baked notions of everywhere else outside a hundred miles from where you live, and those hazy regions where what passes here for fact actually makes sort of sense. Madagascar's ruled by lemurs; Taiwanese labor under a perpetual sense of second-class diligence; Western Sahara's Africa's success story thanks to its inhabitability; Andorra's a giant retail outlet. Uruguay could be Paraguay, Chile's too skinny, and Delaware stays a state only to warn the Federal government not to make that mistake again.

It's best to peruse this a few pages at a time, then to give it a rest. Like reading "The Onion" itself, the humor's certainly unrelenting, but the snarky, ironic, and half-erudite, half-idiotic tone verges both on brilliance and sarcasm in copious amounts of one-liners, cartographic captions, and haughty, sophomoric text. It's instructive to have your own lack of education and information overload tossed back at you, from places you barely know on real maps, and as ignored footnotes in textbooks. You'll find such reading habits excoriated when you get to San Marino!

My ancestral land, I found, after centuries of British subjugation, "has at last managed to beat the stereotype of the poor, drunken, fighting Irishman to a bloody pulp." (141) Across the Northern border, I can attest to the veracity of this claim: the people there "are envied for their beautiful accent, a lyrical brogue that reminds many listeners of an aggressive, expletive-ridden poem." (140) Meanwhile the "Leading Cause of Death" remains, post-ceasefire, apparently "going to the pub."

Elsewhere, in my home state, "at least it's sunny." I agree with what the experts here say. San Francisco's the "alternative-lifestyle capital" where you find thousands of young men "living openly off trust-fund money wherever you look." My hometown "is home to some of the kindest and most outgoing people in the world until they realize you're not an agent." If you break into showbiz, you face "the biggest acting role" of your life: "pretending like nothing is wrong while everything around you turns to" #$*%. (022)

Mexico's frontier's charted, where "dozens of Americans" can be found "crossing the border in hopes of escaping work." (025) Hungary's "porn name" is "Gary Hung," while a student can be found mapped fantasizing about his hot teacher "giving legitimate algebra lesson for once." (171) It's better in these places than Africa. The map of Senegal shows where "major imports are peanuts and pretzels" may lead to unrest. Neighboring Gambia's migration pattern similarly causes challenges: "More citizens leave the shallow end as they get older." (104) Lesotho's history's pithy: the original inhabitants "are now dead." (064) The Democratic Rep. of the Congo does track the abyss where humor collapses into misery, and even the writers pale at what they find in the "Home to the world's most horrifying ventriloquist act." (069)

This clash of pampered Western sensibilities and Third World pain makes the atlas, in this section, less lighthearted and more Swiftian in its take on human frailty and geopolitical savagery. Niger's "only available form of birth control remains pregnancy." (097) Malaysia finds the spot where a "Muslim environmentalist" can be tracked "chaining wife to tree." (223) Vietnam hosts a "POW who still thinks U.S. lost the war." (219) But, there's a 20-square-mile "Impossible-to-Satirize Zone." Iraq does not have one yet, but you can plot their "Coalition Troops Welcome-Back Center." (123)

India's introduced as a place where "they fix slow Internet connections while standing waist-deep in sewage, reassure anxious customers that everything will be fine with their hard drive between cholera-induced fainting spells, and listen to iPod-related complaints while fending off giant football-sized rodents." The next page shows the place where you may meet a "librarian with dislocated hip filing Kama Sutra under fiction." (109) Out of such contrasts, indeed, humor and satire and insight into where Wests and Easts, Norths and Souths meet but fail to connect enriches this book, which rewards the browser with thought-provoking cleverness as well as insipid puns, sublime comedy, and lots more flag-related quips than you or I could have come up in a thousand all-nighters in a dorm room or campus watering hole.

Entertaining and weird. Just like the Onion. This stuff must be as fun to write as it is to read.

Encyclopedia of the insane. Great gag gift for those who think they know it all. Especially if they are a teacher! :P

Yes, this book uses some pretty grim humor, but I actually think that it would be wrong to assume that just because the writers are irreverent means that they lack compassion. If anything they are shedding light on the hypocrisy of wealthy nations and clearly know a lot about the abuses of colonialism. The writers of the Onion appear to come from a very well educated leftist perspective and I don't think they are nihilists, I think they're using humor to show a different and actually more accurate picture of the world than we normally see. I laughed a lot anyway. Yes, this stuff is tragic and haunts me, but sometimes laughter is the only way to cope. I'm not sure all of you who condemned it fully get that.

I found at least 2 "up from the toes, hurt your abdomen if you've had surgery in the last 3 years" guffaws on every page, more often 10 or 15. I gave this to my son for his birthday and the party became reading from the book. Everyone was laughing so hard, it seemed like we were back to the days of pot, beer, and SNL (not that I ever smoked or drank, Seamus!). People were literally rolling on the floor. Since then, he's been having to hide it from me. I try to limit my reading to when he's not home or when he's doing school work, but it's an addiction! Just like all the Onion publications, it is vicious sarcasm, so you do have to be a particularly awful human being to enjoy it, but if you are despicable, if you kick puppies, if your mother won't talk to you anymore, get it yesterday!

Apparently social satire is not a popular topic among today's educators. Our son was suspended for three days from Junior high school for bringing this book to school and showing it to some classmates.

My wife and I did not go through the book in detail and realized (too late) that it does contain some offensive language, pictures, and racial references. It was a lot easier to find this offensive content after a school district employee spent an afternoon flagging all of the offending pages with post-its. In my opinion it was all (well mostly all) relevant social commentary, but offensive non the less.

We thought the punishment pretty extreme, given the offensive content is minimal compared to an episode of "South Park" or any version of Grand Theft Auto. I guess you can chalk this one up to bad parenting. Too bad really, as the book humorously attacks some pretty serious issues, it easily engages young adults, and promotes a lot of good discussion.

This book is hilarious but it's also about as un-PC as it gets. If you're sensitive about that, it isn't for you. ODW is funny from cover to cover, and some of it is laugh-out-loud, in the manner of an insult comic's take on the world. The Onion cleverly and often outrageously exploits every national, ethnic, and cultural stereotype there is, both historic and present day. If you can get into that, don't miss this book, and don't miss a word of it including the tiny map notations. If insult comedy bothers you, and no corner of the globe escaped their merciless barbs, spend your money on something else.

I've bought 3 more copies as gifts for family members. When I showed them mine, they so enjoyed leafing through they couldn't wait to borrow it and show it to others themselves. I doubted I'd get it back, though, so I got them their own. It's a terrific gift, as long as you're sure you won't be inadvertently stepping on tender toes.

This is probably the funniest and most clever book I have ever read. You will laugh so hard and so often that you'll never want to put it down. Buy it!

this is actually a great coffee table book for enjoying with friends. We read it aloud, looking up our favorite places, and laughed hysterically at times. Of course the humor is at times, sick, but it's what you would expect from the onion. Very well done. We have given it as a gift several times already.

I found this book to be laugh-out-loud funny. But since I was giving it as a gift (yeah, ok, I read it first) I was a little concerned about some of the jokes and gags being built around the misfortunes of some countries and peoples. If that won't bother you, then enjoy!

Our Dumb World is to be savored! Each page contains humorous renditions of the selected country, some of which we've never heard of-as the writers will remind us!
Very non-politically correct, Our Dumb World is a refreshing slice of sometimes unfortunate truth.
theonion.com is my Home Page, so each day I enjoy the wit and wisdom of these extraordinary writers. Sometimes the real world is hard to separate from The Onion's world!
Our Dumb World is highly recommended!!

The amount of time and energy to gather info for this book is impressive. This creation took many great minds to put together. What an achievement! It is targeted to folks that enjoy poor tasteless jokes with some grotesques pictures. Rehashed stereotypes are carefully and painfully arranged in an atlas format. You can laugh at the entire planet and the bigotry is evenly spread -because then it is acceptable. The readers can hide behind this thin curtain and laugh out loud. This book is meaningless and it adds nothing. I will hope that the most people (truly) see this as fictional. However with all the unhappy people out there- the market for this type of book is alive and well.

PROS: packed fool of jokes. I mean, everywhere!
Basicly every country is made fun of
worth the money, it's so densely packed
has lots of countries' histories, but with joke twists
SO FUNNY

cons: they pick one flaw, laugh at it for pages sometimes. should be varied
the map jokes are kinda unfunny sometimes. But my favorite:
'entire family feeding on placenta' HAHHAHA

BUY IT

This book is really funny and I have kept it on my coffee table since the day it arrived. It is perfect to pick up and read a few pages here and there. Everybody that comes to my house grabs it and can't put it down.

This book is so wrong...but so right. If you read, I think you'll know what I mean. The Onion staff viciously destroys the credibility of every nation on Earth, to the amusement of the reader. I brought this on a road trip and we kept ourselves entertained for hours.

This book is sarcastic, cynical, and even offensive (if you're the typed to be offended easily). However, it's more informational than you think. I think I'd loved to read textbooks more if they were all like "Our Dumb World."

I had my doubts when I read reviews saying this was The Onion's best book ever - their annual article compendia are so damn good that's a high bar - but this is simply an amazing piece of work. Sure, the humor is tasteless, brutal, and politically incorrect - but come on, that's why I read The Onion and not The Journal of International Hugging and Puppies and Kittens: I LIKE that stuff. Anyone who picks up a book with the phrase "Better-Veiled Xenophobia" on the cover and gets offended by the content should not be allowed to return it, but instead should be charged double for it. Anyway, the strange thing I'm finding is that it's forcing me to learn about the world outside the I-95 corridor. I've never been geographically aware; I always thought "Senegal" was a constipation medication and "California" was a lunatic asylum with Congressional representation. But in a perverse way, this book is helping me learn more about other lands (I'm still right about California, though). I've found it best read with Wikipedia on hand to look up the satirical references... what happened in Lisbon in 1755? Did The Onion make up a country that basically controls a big river inside another country? Is the Democratic Republic of Congo really that screwed up? Is Queen Rania hot? (Answers: Lots of bad things; No, it's Gambia; Apparently; and Oh my, yes.) Among the best sections, mainly due to the amusing tone they take, are Jordan, Suriname, San Marino, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and "The Seriously Who Cares Islands". But it's all damn good. If you understand what satire is and is supposed to do, and can get over the fact that they make fun of both "Save Darfur" people AND Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie, you'll laugh yourself silly - and maybe learn a thing or three if you're not careful. Beyond excellent.

This was a great gift choice for anyone that enjoys satire and a world view. It's also great for any place, such as on a plane, where you might want to read short and humorous articles.

Bought copies of the book for my 3 early 20's sons. They loved it as they read the Onion all the time.

Bought copies of the book for my 3 early 20's sons. They loved it as they read the Onion all the time.

This book is downright offensive. I can appreciate many kinds of dark humor, but using photos of handless children and mass graves as fodder for jokes is going too far. The editors of this book should have their heads examined. Onion, clear your conscience by donating the proceeds of this book to humanitarian causes, specifically in Africa.

Goodbye forever Onion people.

This is a laugh-out-loud and share with your friends book -- a totally irreverent look at our world. Get ready, for there is no country or group that does not get mercilessly speared by this absolutely hysterical tome.

The Onion's Our Dumb World is a hilarious book. Every page is densely packed with humor related to the country or culture it's describing. The book plays havoc with popular stereotypes (Nazism in Germany, jealousy of the US in Canada), confusion (the Georgia of the US is not the Georgia of the USSR), and misinformation (Iceland is not actually icy). There are copious historical jokes and even the maps--sprinkled with helpful "facts" and "points of interest"--are laugh-out-loud funny. The fact that the humor is so dense and so well-thought out is refreshing--very few books available today have made me laugh the way this one has.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in history or geography who needs a good laugh.

This book is a scream! My boss got it for her fiance for Christmas, and it looked like so much fun that I ordered one for my husband. And he's loving it - he even reads to me from it & we're both rolling on the floor. You too will enjoy it, I bet!

My 20 year old daughter asked for this book for Christmas. We all fought over it after she finished reading it. It is a really fun book - highly recommend it!

Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Editionwill either make you laugh or make you wonder. Both of those are good... especially in comparison with the recent powers that be who NEVER wondered, had no sense of humor (or perspective) and didn't know the depth of their dumbth. If you aren't getting a belly-laugh per page, GET HELP.

My father and my teenage daughter LOVE this book! There are quite a few swears and inappropriate themes in it, but all in all, it's funny!

Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in some casual humor in pieces. Leave it on your coffee table and open it up for a good laugh here and there.

This is a book of stereotypes. Stereotypes regarding different states of the USA and stereotypes about foreign nations included. Very very funny -I highly recommend.

My daughter gave this to her dad for Christmas, but everyone in the family ended up reading it--even my 13-year-old who rarely picks up upassigned reading. I didn't even have to read it, because everyone else kept reading excerts to me aloud.

It's really funny, really irreverent, really clever...kind of like Jon Stewart's "America" which got everyone in my family reading too. And who knows, maybe we're all learning a little geography at the same time.

As much fun for the 15 year old as the 53 year old.
As clever as the weekly paper, informative? and insightful.
Put it next to the other atlas and confuse friends.
Beautiful illustrations, detailed maps and images.
Be careful not to use it for school projects, Junior might not get the grade he needs!

This book sounded like so much fun in a radio review, but it is kind of like listening in on pre-teen boys telling jokes. Funny for a couple of minutes, but pretty boring after the first few.

Although the title seems unorthodox, it's certainly eye catching and then backs up your curiousity with a fresh and truthful approach to identifying countries around the world. It is not the old style Atlas approach of Gross National Products and scenic wonders, it goes right for the cultural throat. The smile it brought to my face was not because of the content, it was because of the honesty of the content. I researched some of the work and found it highly credible. If you're not interested in the reality of what these countries truly represent, don't read this. If you don't want your awareness of the world around you to be more accurate, don't read this. If you don't want a book that's easy to put down in a few minuets, read this.

This book has all the ingredients needed to be nursed back to a healthy demeanor or to boost your immune system. Laughter makes you get better and better, Humor is the answer to many ailments.
Looking at the whole world with humor is even better.
Great buy!

I ordered this book as a gift and received it promptly and in brand new conditon.

Excellent work, so much truly "to the point" nonsense, it makes my head spin...
Some of the humor is very rough, it should have some kind of warning ("not for sissies" or something like that).

This is one funny book in the most EXTREMELY politically incorrect way. I bought four copies and gave them away as gifts: a bold yet foolish move. Three copies brought rave reviews as well as promises to keep them away from the children. I found myself apologizing twice, at least, to the recipient of the fourth copy.
Not a book for the kiddies.

I gave this book to my wife for a Christmas present and she loves it. I find myself reading the book as much as she does. Very enjoyable and funny.

The audio book contains selected entires from the atlas including several U.S. States, European nations, Asian governments, African territories, South American banana republics, Middle Eastern war zones, and even a few islands that haven't been completely destroyed by Tsunamis yet.

The voices of this audio book are as follows:

Main Reader, a very serious sounding man. He can make you realize how boring places such as Suriname are, or totally multiply the comedy of vulgar places like New Jersey.

Fact Woman, titles and timelines are read as if by an airport PA. Generally not as complementary to the material as Serious Man.

Distinguished Expert, an imitation of a sour old codger reads various sub-articles. Very tiresome and forced. The only reason for the reduced rating.

Some of the more bizarre entires like North Korea and Nicaragua are included. There are definitely a few outrageous surprises and Audio-specific gags in this edition, I recommend it if you can't get enough of the book.