Atlas, Schmatlas

I'm guessing most of you are much like myself, and have little previous knowledge of some of the worlds smaller, lesser known countries like Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Togo, Chad, Nagorno-Karabakh, Qatar, and Tuvalu just to name a few. To the rescue, well sort of, is a book (which I also got for Christmas) called "Atlas, Schmatlas". The book is self described as "an absolutely silly, yet oddly informative and comprehensive atlas of the world". To illustrate, here are a couple of the "facts" listed about the countries:

Djibouti - "Adam Ant's mum was Paul McCartney's cleaner. That's got nothing to do with Djibouti, but its pretty interesting nonetheless".


Or Wake Island - "Wake Island is actually three small atolls very close together that have been annexed by the U.S. since 1899. Not much has gone on there because of the wake. No records are available detailing who died exactly, but the wake's been going on for ages, and no one dares ask because the widow still keeps making lovely sandwiches and there's plenty of whiskey".

The "illustrations" also supply a lot of laughs, but parents, be warned, this is not a book to buy for the kids. We'll I guess you could, but you would have a lot of explaining to do... All the grown ups can check it out here:


Atlas, Schmatlas

I can't say I learned a whole lot from reading this book, but it did provide sufficient comedy to redeem itself. And I guess I liked it enough to blog about it.
- Chris