Good overview of the recent history and the basics about armed conflicts throughout the world. Not comprehensive nor scholarly, but then Harris makes not pretense of either. Honest and straightforward attempt by an average college-educated person to comprehend the current state of the world. ( )

Subtitled “Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide,” this book gives short essays on the various “little wars” going on around the world.

Where is the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II? Try the Democratic Republic of the Congo, right in the middle of Africa, where nearly 4 million people have been killed in the last six years. Huge deposits of gold, diamonds and copper, all over the country, have not helped the situation. The term “blood diamonds” came from the simultaneous civil wars in the west African countries of Cote D’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone (also paid for with diamond mining).

Burma is full of various ethnic groups who have had a hard time getting along with each other. Currently, it is like a Third World Soviet Union, a group of diverse lands controlled by police state tactics. Did you know that the official calendar in North Korea says that time began with the birth of Kim Il-Sung? While it’s 2008 in the rest of the world, in North Korea, it’s the year 97.

In a way, America is financing both sides in the civil war in Colombia. On one side, the US Government sends millions of dollars in aid, usually military, to the right-wing government. On the other side, Colombia produces 80% of the world’s cocaine, of which America consumes more than half, so American drug users are financing the rebels.

The national motto of Scotland, translated into English, is “Nobody provokes me with impunity.” Seriously. The nationalist symbol of Wales is the leek, a type of large green onion. Nobody knows why.

Who Hates Whom? may be intended as a humor book, but it does a really good job at explaining the various wars and insurrections that sometimes reach the evening news. ( )

Who Hates Whom is a really convenient guide to many of the horrors humans are inflicting on one another in the 21st century. As such, it's a pretty unrelenting chronicle of cruelty and violence. The book covers in brief form such familiar atrocities as the Iraq war, the Palestinian conflict, North Korea, and the like. But the book also goes through much less familiar territory like the Congo, Nepal, Guatemala, and the like. It's amazing the bloodshed we in the West never hear about. Over 3 MILLION people dies in the Congolese Wars and nary a word was printed or said about it here in the US.

Bob Harris does a nice job navigating this dicey territory with humor (such as one can muster) and a surprising amount of optimism at the end. He reminds the readers that most of the world is in fact thankfully violence free (relatively speaking) and is in fact far more peaceful than it's ever been. One constant theme throughout the book is a running tally of important news items that we missed so that we could have round the clock coverage of Anna Nichole Smith's death. Who Hates Whom isn't a detailed account of these conflicts and Harris is the first to admit he's decidedly not an expert. But he is a great guide to these troubled times. ( )

I can't recommend this book enough!

This is a very readable primer for international conflicts. You'd expect a book about wars and atrocities to be horribly depressing, but Bob Harris manages to interject some humor and levity without minimizing the subject matter. The most amazing part of this book is that it still manages to be hopeful. ( )