Product Description

Offbeat travel writer Dixe Wills nails down the essence of every single country on the planet. Say goodbye to sleepless nights fretting over the average number of puls to the Afghani, or wondering what's in Bhutan today and whether it will still be fresh by the time you get it home. With a handy grading system to reveal who are the globe's real top nations and which ones are letting the side down on a monumental scale, it's no wonder that experts are declaring "New World Order" the most important book to be written in the last 500 years. Without it, all is chaos and anarchy. And that's a bad thing, apparently.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #401232 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

About the Author
Dixe Wills is the author of Places to Hide and The Z to Z of Great Britain, both of which remain the benchmarks of their respective genres. He writes a monthly column for culture magazine Third Way, and bangs out the occasional Strindberg adaptation for the stage in a largely doomed attempt to appear deep and mysterious.

Customer Reviews

Learn about the world the fun way
It's very difficult to learn about things, particularly when what you want to learn about is everything in the world. Handily, Dixe Wills has stopped roaming around obscure corners of Britain for a minute and written New World Order, a book that not only gives you all the pertinent facts (where it is, capital city, currency, size in relation to Wales) about every country (and quasi-country) in the world, but also manages to be very funny. This makes it a lot better than most other books that might try to teach you something. In fact it's a lot better than most other books full stop.

If you like the world, or even if you don't really like it much but want to know more about it (as ignorance never got anyone anywhere), then you should buy this book.

The world as it really is
Just finished New World Order - couldn't put it down. Poignant, shame-inducing (I'm English), fascinating and the funniest thing I have read since I don't know when.
This book seriously introduces you to every nation, and quasi-nation in the world; you'll be surprised at just how many there are.
The one thing this book did for me which I didn't expect was show me just how completely pointless, racist and vicious national anthems are.
To get the most out of the book you must read it in order, like a novel, as there are some jokes that depend on previous entries.
I've read Wills' 3 books and this is the best of them.

Witty and surprisingly useful
All the time we are battered by references to far flung parts of the globe about which we all too often know woefully little (where exactly is Kazakhstan?). This book helps to bring everything into focus and in a couple of minutes gives you enough useful info allied with offbeat stuff and an idea of just how sound (or otherwise) a particular country might be. Keep it at your side for dipping into - or read it straight through and that's the whole world - sorted.