Banner across the front says "Includes the latest Eastern European developments." Since it's a 1992 edition, this means that it includes the flag of a reunited Germany, some of the flags of the former Soviet republics, the Yugoslavian, Slovenian, Bosnian, and Croatian flags but none for Macedonia, Montenegro, or Serbia, and no mention at all of the breakup of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Oh, and Yukon is still listed as a territory and Nunavut isn't mentioned at all.

So yes, it's not current. The population figures are surely out of date. But the majority of the flags have not changed, most of the maps still apply, and the country information remains interesting.

Plus, I find it a good reminder of how quickly so many of those changes happened in just a few years, and I see that at some point in the past I had supplemented the book with some color copies of additional flags, including that of the EU.

For more vexillological information, I suggest the FOTW website, although I'm not sure that's completely current either.

Off to see the world in MaryZee's Biographies of Things box. Not sure if everyone will agree about this book's appropriateness for the box, but I cleared it with 6of8 first, and I've always been fascinated by the info behind flag designs. Throw in a bit of history & geography (and lots of colors) and it works for me. :)

I'm claiming this from the Biographies of Things bookbox. Even if the flags aren't completely up to date (I know I can't keep track!) it looks like it has some interesting info on the origins of the various flag designs - and it mentions some of the names used for the flags, which would have come in handy for this forum thread {wry grin}.

I enjoyed many of the tidbits about the different flags, some of which have very amusing back-stories - often, the choice of color or design was made by popular vote, and may have had to be changed when somebody realized that it was too similar to another country's flag. Others are heavily symbolic, with each color, shape, and image having meaning. And still others seem to have been chosen for random reasons, but have suffered a great deal of post-design interpretation - so if you're designing a flag, you don't have to decide what its elements mean ahead of time; the people will cheerfully make something up!

Oh, and I learned that Switzerland and Vatican City have the only two flags that are perfectly square. Who knew?

I plan to leave this book on the book-swap shelf in the Tyngsboro post office lobby at around 3 or so; hope someone enjoys it! [I've tucked a newspaper page about Olympic ice-skating into the book; perhaps it will come in handy during the upcoming Winter Olympics, especially during the parade of nations...]