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“Although land mass is important, people are probably more important than area,” says Dorling. “In a map by population, a sixth of the world would be Chinese. You could have a world atlas where the Sahara just wouldn’t appear.”

The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford is published by Thames & Hudson and is available from BooksFirst priced £26.95 (RRP £29.95), free p&p on 0870 1608080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

Who publishes the most books?

This map shows the numbers of new book and pamphlet titles published across the world in 1999. These are titles rather than volumes of books; each new book published is counted only once on this map, regardless of how many copies it sells.

A book is defined as having at least 50 pages, while a pamphlet has five to 49 pages.

About 1 million new book titles were published worldwide in 1999.

It becomes clear from looking at the map that the UK publishes a disproportionately large number of titles.

The highest rate of publication of new titles per person is in the Vatican City, where one new title was produced for every five residents. By comparison, the worldwide average figure was one new title for every 6,000 people.

Most popular refugee destinations

We think of refugees primarily leaving poor countries for the rich nations of the West. This map tells a different story.

Following the United Nations definition, a refugee is someone fleeing a country for “fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.

In 2003, the highest numbers of refugees went to the Middle East, Central Asia and South America. On this map, Africa is surprisingly large and the USA surprisingly small. This is because most refugees cross national borders rather than continents. Africa, therefore, has as big a responsibility to cope with refugees as the UK.

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