A Visual Guide to Flags of the World.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Traditionally, books about flags are arranged by country, making identification of specific flags a slow process of elimination. Realizing that flags are composed of a few basic graphic elements (stripes, circles, squares, etc.) de Kleer broke with tradition and sorted flags by their dominant visual components. These components are design, colour, shape (length-to-width ratio) and complexity. If you want to identify a flag with blue stripes, for example, simply look under stripes, then skim down the page to blue stripes and find your specimen. To find the flag of a specific country there is an alphabetical index.

Although tiny in terms of number of pages, this all-colour, innovative work is packed with information. In addition to illustrations of some 400 flags, there is a quick history of flags, notes on the significance of colour, and the protocol of flying flags. In addition to the national flags of the world, the guide also includes illustrations and explanations of the international code of signals used by ships at sea. An illustrated anatomy of a flag, skill testing puzzles, a bibliography, and a glossary will be welcome to those new to vexillolgy—the study of flags.