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

Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition | The Onion | Not for the thin-skinned

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Our Dumb World: Th...

	Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition The Onion Little, Brown and Company, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 102 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Banned at Junior High School

Apparently social satire is not a popular topic among today's educators. Our son was suspended for three days from Junior high school for bringing this book to school and showing it to some classmates.

My wife and I did not go through the book in detail and realized (too late) that it does contain some offensive language, pictures, and racial references. It was a lot easier to find this offensive content after a school district employee spent an afternoon flagging all of the offending pages with post-its. In my opinion it was all (well mostly all) relevant social commentary, but offensive non the less.

We thought the punishment pretty extreme, given the offensive content is minimal compared to an episode of "South Park" or any version of Grand Theft Auto. I guess you can chalk this one up to bad parenting. Too bad really, as the book humorously attacks some pretty serious issues, it easily engages young adults, and promotes a lot of good discussion.

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Not for the thin-skinned

This book is hilarious but it's also about as un-PC as it gets. If you're sensitive about that, it isn't for you. ODW is funny from cover to cover, and some of it is laugh-out-loud, in the manner of an insult comic's take on the world. The Onion cleverly and often outrageously exploits every national, ethnic, and cultural stereotype there is, both historic and present day. If you can get into that, don't miss this book, and don't miss a word of it including the tiny map notations. If insult comedy bothers you, and no corner of the globe escaped their merciless barbs, spend your money on something else.

I've bought 3 more copies as gifts for family members. When I showed them mine, they so enjoyed leafing through they couldn't wait to borrow it and show it to others themselves. I doubted I'd get it back, though, so I got them their own. It's a terrific gift, as long as you're sure you won't be inadvertently stepping on tender toes.

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the funniest book I've ever read, ever

I found at least 2 "up from the toes, hurt your abdomen if you've had surgery in the last 3 years" guffaws on every page, more often 10 or 15. I gave this to my son for his birthday and the party became reading from the book. Everyone was laughing so hard, it seemed like we were back to the days of pot, beer, and SNL (not that I ever smoked or drank, Seamus!). People were literally rolling on the floor. Since then, he's been having to hide it from me. I try to limit my reading to when he's not home or when he's doing school work, but it's an addiction! Just like all the Onion publications, it is vicious sarcasm, so you do have to be a particularly awful human being to enjoy it, but if you are despicable, if you kick puppies, if your mother won't talk to you anymore, get it yesterday!

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Amazing

This is probably the funniest and most clever book I have ever read. You will laugh so hard and so often that you'll never want to put it down. Buy it!

I'm not sure some of you "get" it

Yes, this book uses some pretty grim humor, but I actually think that it would be wrong to assume that just because the writers are irreverent means that they lack compassion. If anything they are shedding light on the hypocrisy of wealthy nations and clearly know a lot about the abuses of colonialism. The writers of the Onion appear to come from a very well educated leftist perspective and I don't think they are nihilists, I think they're using humor to show a different and actually more accurate picture of the world than we normally see. I laughed a lot anyway. Yes, this stuff is tragic and haunts me, but sometimes laughter is the only way to cope. I'm not sure all of you who condemned it fully get that.

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