Book Mention: An Atlas of Extinct Countries

Sometimes countries just don't work out.  Sometimes countries weren't good ideas to begin with.  This breezy little book  explores some of these wrong turns of history.  It's divided into four main sections, corresponding to the four main ways these countries were founded: Chancers & Crackpots / Mistakes & Micronations / Lies & Lost Kingdoms / Puppets & Political Footballs.  You have to admit, the names of these sections pretty well sum up the reasoning and mechanisms by which most nations, extinct or existent, were founded.

Here are a few illustrative examples from the book:

• The Ottawa Civic Hospital Maternity Ward, created so that a Dutch princess could have a baby in Canada during WWII without causing a constitutional crisis (on the off chance that the Allies would win the war and The Netherlands be restored)
• Libertalia, a pirate haven on the northern tip of Madagascar, which was not in reality nearly as cool as that sounds
• Dahomey, which had a real existence, somewhat fictionalized in a recent film
• German Democratic Republic, and good riddance to both it and the Cold War

Of course my personal favorites are The State of Muskogee and The Republic of West Florida, living as I do sandwiched in the wilds separating the two.  There are plenty more countries, each accompanied by a map; some extremely brief header material giving the population, language, cause of death, disposition today, and some curious locator keywords; and finally a one to three page history.

As with this week's earlier mentioned The Conspiracy Book, the Atlas of Extinct Countries is comprised of short chapters detailing each each of its subjects in more or less sequential order.  This makes for good bedtime or "five minutes to kill" reading material.  Also, most new nations begin as little more than a conspiracy, so there's that commonality as well.

All in all, this book is fun reading to peck at in odd moments over a couple of months.  As the intro chapter concludes, ALL HAIL NEUTRAL MORESNET.

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