Who's in Charge?

Andrew Marr gets his name and picture on the front cover of this book for writing the foreword. And a good thing he did, for it is the most readable part. For the rest, the DK team has put together something that more resembles a board game than a book. Throw a die and open at the spread indicated and get an instant introduction to – for instance ‘What is dictatorship?’, ‘How the state works’ or ‘Rights and Responsibilities’.

Politics is something that many of us leave to other people, and it seems that this collection of ideas and images has the noble aim of shaking us out of this lethargy. It’s just a pity that it does so in such an unreadable manner. And with so paltry an index – a prime necessity for this jumbled approach, but here squashed into two columns of the final page (well, they had to use the other three for source acknowledgements).