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grep 's review for:
Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags
by Tim Marshall
Very interesting read. A quite comprehensive tour around the world in flags. The author definitely knows what he's talking about, and at the same time writes very accessibly. I went into this expecting to learn mainly about the 'big' and/or 'interesting' flags, but the way it was written as a geographical round trip gave me a lot of information about, well, pretty much every flag in most every region, as well as historical roots, common symbolisms, and interesting anecdotes full of witticisms and dad-puns. The whole text is very easily digestible, and I had no trouble getting through it as a layman -- no vexillology degrees needed to enjoy this (do they even have those?)
The nature of the chosen structure made some parts a bit boring, to me at least: I didn't need a rapid-fire description of every Central American, African, and "-stan" nation's flag, and I could tell in a few places the author didn't really have all that much to say about many of them either -- I think he just felt he needed to include them for completeness's sake. Which is all just as well.
I'd recommend this to people who have a general interest in flags and/or geopolitics (myself the former). It's generally very informative and accessible (have I said that already?)
The nature of the chosen structure made some parts a bit boring, to me at least: I didn't need a rapid-fire description of every Central American, African, and "-stan" nation's flag, and I could tell in a few places the author didn't really have all that much to say about many of them either -- I think he just felt he needed to include them for completeness's sake. Which is all just as well.
I'd recommend this to people who have a general interest in flags and/or geopolitics (myself the former). It's generally very informative and accessible (have I said that already?)