Our Dumb World by Inc. The Onion Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Our Dumb World
Book Review: Brutal and intelligent global satire
Summary: 4 Stars
Merciless, funny and brutal, fans of the Onion will love this satirical atlas of the world. Rather than celebrate the richness of countries cultural legacies, or industrial and economic strengths, the Onion chooses to focus on what life is 'really' like -i.e. Arrogance in France, incest in the American South, mass murder in Africa, a whole host of obscure nations struggling to find any sort of identity. Rich in humour, with a mass of jokes on each page. This is a great addition to your humour collection.
The effort of keeping up such intensive satire is clearly wearing, and the atlas is stronger in territories the authors are familiar with (i.e. North America), than in some other parts of the world (Africa). But it certainly contains enough brutal satire to keep even the most cynical reader happy.
Book Review: Da da da Dumb
Summary: 5 Stars
You'll laugh your Assyrian Botswana off. Have a magnifying glass handy, though, as the tiny print is hard to read.Book Review: Exactly what I expected
Summary: 4 Stars
My BF got this to give to his grandfather, who loves politics but has never seen or heard of The Onion. We took a look through it and it was just as good as the issue that comes out every Thursday. I don't know if he will end up giving it to his grandfather, however, since there are frequent inappropriate pictures (child porn, anyone?). But this would make a great coffee table book in any young household, and you can be sure that it will engender quite a conversation.Book Review: Funny and Annoying
Summary: 3 Stars
There are some very funny parts of this book. I have lived in many countries and states and the authors really did a good job (for the most part) of finding and writing about true funny things. Fiji is nowhere to be found in the book which I thought was odd and Virginia's story seemed to fall short of funny but other places were right on. We laughed out loud a lot reading this. The annoying part about this book for me was the fact that the only place that actually had good things written about it was New York City. Obviously the authors live there and are of the same mentality of many New York City dwellers that there is absolutely nothing negative about the city, but come on. Really? Nothing at all? It is a great city but there are many funny things to poke fun at. I guess of course that would be blasphemy to a New Yorker. So the message we got from reading the book was that everywhere in the world is stupid except New York City. Some people may be able to get past this and enjoy the book but I just found that to be egocentric and it ruined the book for me.Book Review: Genocide is not funny
Summary: 2 Stars
A lot of good laughs here but genocide and starvation just don't connect with my funny bone. I was disappointed and found it hard to read the "comic" entries for Rwanda, Sudan, and Haiti, among others.