Book Review: Governments Around the World: From Democracies to Theocracies

Abstract

The brief single-volume Governments Around the World: From Democracies to Theocracies is edited by Fred M. Shelley, Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Oklahoma. The task of meaningfully representing international governments in a volume of more than five hundred pages is a difficult one, but Shelley delivers an excellent work that uses illustrative examples of countries to guide the reader to an understanding of types of governments without exhaustively providing all examples. Shelley has authored several other related reference works including The World’s Population: An Encyclopedia of Critical Issues, Crises, and Ever-Growing Countries (ABC-CLIO, 2014) and Nation Shapes: the Stories Behind the World’s Borders (ABC-CLIO, 2013).