To be honest, I bet that I skipped over half of the chapters, but if I work up an interest in those countries the book is still there waiting for me. In the meantime, many of the insights I picked up about the areas that do interest me were so keen that they were instantly worth five stars.
For instance, the only downside of being an under-populated country is that it is difficult to assemble an army and still have enough people left to run the country. On the other hand, the difficulties of being over-populated can be so enormous that all countries should avoid it, but without a frontier to move the excess population to there may be no way out of the problems but war.
A Period of Time to View and Understand Misconceptions
The. ever changing world. Good background on countries and how they formed and interacted with each other. Some attitudes stayed the same and some changed.