Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds by Ian Wright

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Fascinating Facts!
Thanks to Granta Books, The Experiment and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World by Ian Wright.
Sections include people and populations, politics, power, and religion, culture and customs, friends and enemies, geography, history, national identity, crime and punishment, and nature. This book is full of maps, of course, but also trivia. The author has created maps for just about everything you can possibly think of, such as what countries drive on the wrong side of the road, generate nuclear power, population comparisons and some I’ve never thought of or known about, like which countries use a comma or point to separate decimals. I had no idea that anyone used commas as a decimal separator. The map of countries showing McDonald’s is jaw-dropping since McDonald’s restaurants are almost everywhere in the world! Longest place names fascinated me as well as the map showing Vikings’ raids and settlements. The weirdest map to me is of the world’s time zones which zig-zags everywhere. Brilliant Maps promises to be an interesting book and it delivers, 5 stars!

 

Strange History

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Thanks to NetGalley and Portable Press for the digital download of Strange History by Bathroom Readers Institute! This incredible book kept me reading from beginning to end and I finished it in one sitting because of its entertainment value! Strange History is a fact driven world history of slang, fads, quotes that stand the test of time, boring parts of history, historical food facts, styles and trends by decades, almost assassinations, misconceptions, freaky facts, made-up languages, obsolete words, real life Frankensteins and a bunch of other historical fact categories. I want to use this book for a jigsaw lesson to teach what facts can be found in the 000’s section of the DEWEY Decimal System. Great entertainment!