Our Dumb World by Inc. The Onion Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Our Dumb World
Book Review: Our dumb book.
Summary: 1 Stars
It's one thing to make fun of America's ethnocentrism, France's arrogance and Canada's um, whatever, but the jokes in this book about genocide, child prostitution, starvation and rape are in very poor taste. At worst, this book is sick. At best it's just not that funny.Book Review: Stress-Busting Laughs for the Literate
Summary: 5 Stars
In these time of global economic crisis, there aren't too many people out there who wouldn't benefit from some laughter. If you like your laughs delivered via the written word instead of the television, this book is for you.
The Onion's atlas of the world delivers laughs for anyone willing to read it. The essays are offensive and xenophobic; it's as if the stereotypical Ugly American wrote the summaries of each locale. This book does need to be read in small doses, because an overload of the material is possible. If you buy a rich cheesecake it's best eaten in small doses. You'll still get lots of enjoyment but the joy will be spread out over a longer period of time.
Recommended, and quite highly!
Book Review: The GREATEST book ever written
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: The text book I needed in high school
Summary: 5 Stars
Our world never looked so dumb
The talented writers behind the `The Onion' peel away layers to reveal a collection of nations that just might make you cry.
When is an atlas more than a collection of maps and dry data? When it is written and designed by the crazed minds behind The Onion, that's when. The Onion is the wildly funny and popular news satire Web, print and video efforts of a team of writers who are as intelligent and insightful as they are gut-busting funny. They definitely score again with "Our Dumb World", an atlas that carves up the Earth into easily digestible pieces of sheer madness.
The book is very well designed and the tone is pitch perfect, giving it a feel of seriousness and credibility that one would expect in a real atlas. It all works to bring to light the hypocrisy, stupidity and cruelty that blanket so much of the modern world. Rarely is it so easy to laugh at war, poverty, famine and rampant ignorance.
While most of the humor is low-brow and crude, virtually every page also includes some meaningful message about warped values and priorities. No one is spared, from the high and mighty nations to the struggling basket cases. All are given swift kicks to the groin in order to provide laughs and enlightenment for readers.
"Our Dumb World" is well stocked with photos, timelines, pie charts and other visual gimmickry that impresses people who don't like to read. I like the line graph that shows the frequency of line graphs used in the book. My favorite, however, is the color-coded "Bono Awareness Map". Each country is tinted in accordance with how much the lead singer of U2 cares about it.
Mindless patriotic robots beware. Your programming may be unsettled by this book. Here's an excerpt from the description of the United States: "America is a place where even the poorest immigrant can, through hard work and dedication, achieve the American Dream for his employer."
The writers of "Our Dumb World" do not shy away from calling it like they see it, no matter how hard hitting or unpopular their analysis may be. On Canada, for example, they offer this burning insight: "Living in the shadow of its southern neighbor, the nation of Canada will never be as great as the U.S. so long as it continues to burden itself with universal health care, refuses to drill for oil in federally protected wildlife reserves, and neglects its duty to blindly support unilateral invasions of Middle Eastern states."
Please do not think that this book is entirely mean, negative, ethnocentric and condescending. For example, while it calls Panama a "shortcut with its own national anthem" it does praise Cuba for perfecting communism by "creating a truly equal society where desperate poverty is distributed evenly among all citizens."
The beautiful Bahamas, according to "Our Dumb World", is an "all-inclusive, full-service nation" made up of "hundreds of luxurious, foreign-owned islands fully staffed with indigenous pool boys, bartenders, and bellhops. Millions of visitors each year enjoy the nation's turquoise waters, endless sandy beaches and lavish resorts, all of which are strictly off-limits to the Bahamas citizens."
China, though controversial for its human rights and environmental records, is hailed by the atlas as the world's largest mass-producer of Chinese, having manufactured more than 700 billion of them since 1892.
This is not just rude joke after rude joke, however. Social awareness and compassion for humanity pops up from many pages. On Indonesia: "While it has struggled with poverty, Indonesia's close relationship with such world powers as Nike and the Gap has allowed citizens to provide a much higher standard of living for Western consumers tired of low-quality T-shirts."
If political correctness is your thing you won't like this book. My advice is that anyone missing the humor gene should steer well clear of "Our Dumb World". Anyone who rates former U.S president George W. Bush as a great leader, for example, might want to pass as well. You either won't get the jokes or smoke will come out of your ears before you make it to page 15. I suggest you buy something by Ann Coulter instead. On second thought, however, the sort of people who wouldn't find any of this stuff funny are the very people who need it most. Maybe sometimes humor can reach where logic and reason can't.
The section on Africa is crafted to perfection. The writers hit the perfect mix of satire, ridicule and social commentary. As one who has been to Africa, written about poverty and violence there for many years, I was not put off by the humor. In fact, given the attention span of today's public, it could probably do a better job of raising awareness about Africa's problems than a hundred op-ed columns in the New York Times ever could.
This book is not delicate or respectful but it does entertain and inform. It just might even be able to improve some demented and negative worldviews. So, if you want a better world, one with a lot more compassion and common sense, then buy a copy of "Our Dumb World" today and give it to a jerk!
--Guy P. Harrison, author of:
Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity
and
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God
Book Review: Try "Our Dumb Century" instead
Summary: 3 Stars
I usually laughed every couple of pages while reading "Our Dumb World"--but with 25 or so jokes per page, that's not a great batting average. How many funny jokes are there to make about the awful lives of Africans? The repetitive nature of the gags quickly becomes monotonous.
I would recommend the Onion's "Our Dumb Century" instead. Much funnier, and a much wider range of satiric targets.