Following a first-class honours degree in Physics from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Manchester Stephen Webb has worked at a number of UK universities. In addition to shorter works, he has published nine books - one of which won the SETI League award and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize (now Royal Society Winton Prize) for best science book. He is active in outreach activities, having spoken at numerous international conferences, podcasts and radio shows, and his 2018 TED Talk has been viewed over 6 million times.  He has published an undergraduate textbook Measuring the Universe - The Cosmological Distance Ladder (1999) as well as several popular science books, among them Out of this World - Colliding Universes, Branes, Strings, and Other Wild Ideas of Modern Physics in 2004, New Eyes on the Universe - Twelve Cosmic Mysteries and the Tools We Need to Solve Them in 2012, the second edition of If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life in 2015, All the Wonder that Would Be - Exploring Past Notions of the Future in 2017, and New Light Through Old Windows: Exploring Contemporary Science Through 12 Classic Science Fiction Tales in 2019 also published as part of Springer's Science and Fiction series, as well as recently, Clash of Symbols - A ride through the riches of glyphs.

Introduction: Mapping the world

Chapter 1: The world itself

· Earth's poles

· Meteorites

· Waterworld

· Getting away from it all

· The longest straight line over water

· The longest you can walk without having to swim

· Volcanic eruptions over the past 12,000 years

· Earth's forests

· Earth's chemical elements

· Earth's phosphorus

Chapter 2: The world of countries

· Countries named after people

· Monarchies and republics

· Female leaders

· National flags that contain the colour red

· Passport colours

· Driving - left or right?

· Capital punishment

· Press freedom

· Dominance of a capital city

· Population density

Chapter 3: The world perturbed by people

· Carbon dioxide emissions

· My short-haul carbon footprint

· Busiest airline routes

· Renewable electricity output

· Nuclear power generation

· Trash

· Plastic waste

· Pesticide use

· Mammal species under threat

· Night sky brightness

Chapter 4: The world of the built environment

· Homes at risk of rising sea levels

· Lighthouses

· World heritage sites

· Roman amphitheatres

· Skyscrapers

· Spaceports

· The 500 most powerful supercomputers

· Mains frequency

· Sharing a McDonald's

· Soccer stadia

Chapter 5: The world of thoughts, ideas, and beliefs

· The most complex machine ever built

· Scientific productivity

· Intellectual property

· Views on the safety of vaccines

· Good at maths?

· Literacy

· How the world writes

· UFO sightings

· How the world believes

· The happiness of nations

Chapter 6: The world of wellbeing

· Homicide

· Suicide

· Obesity in adults

· Alcohol consumption

· Road traffic deaths

· Incidence of malaria

· Experience of pain yesterday

· How the world dies

· The life expectancy gender gap

· Life expectancy at birth

Chapter 7: The world of sport and leisure

· Football World Cup

· Foreign players in the Premier League

· Summer Olympics

· Chess playing strength

· Shakespeare's world

· Nobel prize for literature

· Going to the movies

· Computer games

· What the world searches for

· Active on social media

Chapter 8: The world of economics

· Accessing cash

· Units of currency

· Gold reserves

· The indebtedness of nations

· Standard of living

· Big Apple

· International tourism

· Military expenditure

· Access to electricity

· Catching fish

Afterword

Index

Around the World in 80 Ways offers a (sometimes opinionated) discussion of 80 data-driven maps of our planet. Taken together, the maps tell a story about the physical world; about the impact our species is having on the world; and about how people live in the world - or at least how we lived immediately before the emergence of Covid-19. The maps lie. All maps lie. But the origins of the deceptions are explained, the data sources are signposted and referenced, and the readers are shown how to create their own maps using freely available software. The reader is thus armed with the tools needed to explore local, national or world data - on topics ranging from science to society; environment to entertainment; wealth to wellbeing - a valuable skill in an age when certain politicians are happy to refer to "alternative facts" and media outlets deliver data visualizations that sometimes mislead as much as inform.