 | Author: FXO (New York, NY) - Se.. | As a purchaser and frequent user of THE WORLD ALMANAC for over thirty years, this is the first time I can recall being so disappointed and annoyed with this wonderful compendium of facts. Following is why.The 2009 WORLD ALMANAC has made some major changes in the U.S. population, zip codes, area codes and metropolitan area rankings data which are included. This is all information I use frequently and among the first I checked.1. Previous issues included U.S. population statistics by state for Places 5,000 Population or More (i.e. by town). Last year, data by town included 1990 population, 2006 population estimate, area code and zip code. Instead of updating with 2000 census data compared to the 2007 estimate, the entire section was eliminated.2. Re zip codes, the only ones included are for Outlying Areas only such as the Northern Marianas and Guam. Useful to be sure, by some, but much more useful to most would be zip codes for the 50 states... | 14 |
 | Author: Steven A. Peterson (Hers.. | Each year, I look forward to this volume. I love the masses of trivia and minutiae contained within the pages of this book. I literally find it fun to rifle through the pages and see what tidbits are there. For those unfamiliar with this publication, it provides facts and figures on all manner of things--from the state of the economy to election results to sports to flags and maps to historical facts (e.g., the roster of American presidents) to science and technology (e.g., disasters) and so on. A cornucopia of facts and factoids.One things I do when I first receive this is to literally randomly select pages and see what is there. For this review, I'll do something similar. The first page that I came up with was the results of Congressional elections in 2008 (Pages 13 and following). Another page that popped up? Pages 95 and following, speaking of portraits on treasury bills and other products from the government (Did you know that George Washington shows up on $50... | 9 |
 | Author: Brian Melendez (Minneapo.. | There are many imitators on the market, some of them quite good, but this almanac has set the standard for more than a century. The New York World newspaper began publishing an almanac in 1868, "a 120-page volume with 12 pages of advertising." The newspaper suspended the almanac's publication in 1876, but publisher Joseph Pulitzer revived it in 1886 as a "compendium of universal knowledge." The almanac has been published annually since, outliving the newspaper whose name it still bears. (The World Almanac is not the oldest almanac in publication, though: that distinction belongs to The Old Farmer's Almanac, which is "North America's oldest continuously published periodical," founded in 1792.)The World Almanac contains much useful information that belongs in any serious basic-reference set. For the world, the almanac presents basic statistics about each nation, and about the world's major religions; and summarizes the world's history, with more detailed histories of the... | 8 |