What on Earth is Going On?

When I saw that our colleagues at Fourth Estate had just published ‘What on Earth is Going On? A Crash Course in Current Affairs’, I thought this just might be the book for me. It would fill in the gaps in my knowledge of current affairs and help me understand the background to some geopolitical issues which I will come across in my new role as a member of Collins Geo’s Policy Committee.

The book covers the obvious issues such as Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq and also less obvious ones such as organic food, Fairtrade and, funnily enough, blogging! It even includes a section on Piracy “… there were 293 piracy incidents reported worldwide in 2008, an increase of 11% from the previous year”, mentioning the town of Eyl, as noted previously in this blog. Each of the 62 chapters is about five or six pages in length and gives a general overview of the subject. The authors keep the material factual with the odd dash of humour and quirky facts. Some of the chapters gave me a basic lesson from scratch about the issue and others consolidated what I already knew.

It’s a worthwhile read and a book you can dip in and out of to broaden your knowledge of the background behind the news.

See the post on What on Earth is Going on? from the 5^th Estate blog (which contains sample chapters).



Elizabeth Donald, Information Editor, Collins Geo Newsroom.