Improving basic geography and cultural knowledge

December 17, 2007 6:54 AM

I'm looking for books that will help me improve my basic knowledge of geography, other countries and cultures.

Ideally what I would like would be a book, or a series of books, with some information about the countries of the world: basic things such as a country's capital, location, population, religions, languages, and so on, but also an overview of its current politics, history, cuisine, important places, culture, etc. So, not an overwhelming amount of information on each country, but a basic, neutral overview containing such information for many countries. I'd like to get it out from the library, so an encyclopedia or something I can't borrow isn't what I'm looking for. Can anyone recommend any specific books or series?

posted by shirobara to education (5 comments total)

CIA World Fact Book has most of the information that you seek. Not much about cuisine however ;)
posted by seawallrunner at 7:13 AM on December 17, 2007

A book that I really found great and comes recommended by my Cultural Geography professor is 'Diversity Amid Globalization'. She preferred the 2nd edition over the 3rd edition, but I see from Amazon that a 4th edition is due out in January 2008.
Here's the link.
posted by mcarthey at 7:29 AM on December 17, 2007

If you want an actual book, something like a geography bee study guide might help—those sorts of basic questions come up all the time. A good atlas goes a long way, too.

I can vouch for Diversity Amid Globalization too, as one of my old profs at GW is an author, and I used the book for her class. A little spendy, though.
posted by timetoevolve at 8:14 AM on December 17, 2007

If you're willing to consider online sources, have you tried the ever popular Wikipedia and/or WikiTravel?
posted by fings at 10:22 AM on December 17, 2007

I'm marking Fings' answer as best very belatedly; I thought of Wikipedia too, but as I already spend far too much time looking at a computer screen, I really hoped for something I could read offline. Wikipedia works pretty well for the kinds of things I wanted, though! And I'll check out Diversity Amid Globalization, thanks mcarthey!
posted by shirobara at 6:33 PM on May 26, 2008