Our Dumb World by Inc. The Onion Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Our Dumb World
Book Review: Not very funny
Summary: 1 Stars
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.Book Review: Funny!
Summary: 5 Stars
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!Book Review: Brilliant satire
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: Awesome! Great Gift.
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: Insensitive and Inaccurate
Summary: 1 Stars
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.