Product Description

Whitaker's Almanack 2006 is the essential reference tool for every home, business and classroom. With unparalleled breadth and depth of content, Whitaker's Almanack is meticulously updated annually, thoroughly checked and contains hundreds of facts and figures on the UK and the rest of the world. Contents include: summaries of the year's news; in-depth profiles of each country; expert overviews on a range of subjects and overviews of the social, economic and political infrastructure of the UK. Government and politics, astronomy, communications, education, transport, utilities, societies and institutions, the legal system, royalty and peerage, social welfare, IT, religion and environment are also covered in-depth. Using Whitaker's Almanack you could find out: which horse won last year's Derby, the world's tallest dam, which countries have the death penalty - or even the definition of Zoroastrianism. Quite simply the perfect book for anyone interested in current affairs and general knowledge. 'Why use the internet when you can leaf through Whitaker's?' - John Humphrys 'A mighty work of reference' - Trevor McDonald

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #451751 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1376 pages

Review
"Perfect for anyone interested in current affairs and general knowledge and a thoughtful distillation of the year's main events." Dimplomat (Jan 2006) "A must-have for the serious seeker after unimpeachable data on politics, law, the professions, civil society and global affairs." The Independent (2 Dec 2005)

Tony Benn
'My shelves still have old copies to which I often refer and even Google is
no replacement in the computer age.'

Sir Trevor McDonald OBE
'A mighty work of reference'

Customer Reviews

A statutory requirement for UK citizens
The first thing to say about this book is that, if you're not a subject of her Brittanic majesty (or a serious Anglophile), there is little or no point in owning this book; if you are from the UK, it should almost be a statutory requirement to have a copy on your bookshelf. If you do already have a copy, be assured the 2006 edition is as worth owning as its predecessor and if, like me, your copy is three years' out of date now would definitely be a good time to invest in an upgrade.

If you are a first-time buyer I would urge you to invest in this book; it is as essential as a dictionary - perhaps more so; most computers now have dictionaries built-in, you could spend a lifetime trying to replicate the repository of knowledge contained in Whittakers', even in the days of Google searches. This book must hold every single thing that a citizen would want to know about his country from the peerage through planning legislation to pension entitlements, it weaves its factual path through law, education, religion, history, geology, politics, key events of 2004/5 and much, much more giving well-written, fastidious and accurate (in 20 years, I have yet to find so much as a typo, much less an error in fact) guidance. At the end, just to prove that, as a nation, we're not entirely insular is a world gazetteer giving a comprehensive digest of every other country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Whittakers' almanac is one of those rare reference books that it is a pleasure to own and serves more than its basic purpose; you can pick it up and, like an encyclopaedia, become lost within its pages, emerging an hour or two later both well-informed and better educated.