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Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition
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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.
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