The internet is bringing people from all over the world together in a way that was not remotely possible a few years ago.  Often I read articles by people from places I never heard of before.  Sometimes it is a country that was studied many years ago in geography class, but now it has a new name. 

Whenever references are made to places unfamiliar to me, I like to look them up in the CIA Factbook.    Many people would not imagine that the CIA provides this service, but in truth the Handbook is quite useful for the general public. 

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

To locate information you can search from a drop down menu about one third down on the right hand side of their home page.  Or, if you do not know the name of the country you are searching for, you can mouse over the map to find the region it is in, then click and mouse over another map to find it. 

The part I like best about the CIA Handbook is the section on “People.”  There we can learn what percentage of a country’s population is within a certain age group, the infant mortality rates, life expectancy, literacy, and even what percentage of a given country’s GNP is spent on education compared to that of other countries.

There is also a section on the economy of each nation that gives the unemployment rate and tells what kinds of jobs people have there and what kind of crops they grow. 

In the communications section, we can read about how many people there use the internet or have cell phones.

In addition to information about all the different countries in the world, the CIA Handbook has a search.  I decided to try it out by putting in a few different search terms just to see what might come up.  As a result I ended up spending hours reading different essays, anecdotes from history, and even something called “an occasional paper.”

It really is a most amazing resource and did I say it is free?