An Atlas of Extinct Countries

- Blurb -

Prisoners of Geography meets Bill Bryson: a funny, fascinating, beautifully illustrated - and timely - history of countries that, for myriad and often ludicrous reasons, no longer exist. ' Countries are just daft stories we tell each other. They' re all equally implausible once you get up close' Countries die. Sometimes it' s murder, sometimes it' s by accident, and sometimes it' s because they were so ludicrous they didn' t deserve to exist in the first place. Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either ' got too greedy' or ' Napoleon turned up' . Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence. This is an atlas of nations that fell off the map. The polite way of writing an obituary is: dwell on the good bits, gloss over the embarrassing stuff. This book fails to do that. And that is mainly because most of these dead nations (and a lot of the ones that are still alive) are so weird or borderline nonsensical that it' s impossible to skip the embarrassing stuff. The life stories of the sadly deceased involve a catalogue of chancers, racists, racist chancers, conmen, madmen, people trying to get out of paying tax, mistakes, lies, stupid schemes and General Idiocy. Because of this - and because treating nation states with too much respect is the entire problem with pretty much everything - these accounts are not fussed about adding to all the earnest flag saluting in the world, however nice some of the flags are.