Reddit reviews Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America

I have The World Encyclopedia of Flags myself and I was honestly very surprised about the quality of the book and how much information it has. I've got one of those flag books that just shows the national flag, and then just has geographical information about each country, but this one actually has information about each flag and when it was adopted, as well as subnational flags and just general information about the field of vexillology, including history and design practices.

And then I read Worth Dying For last year and eh... I wouldn't recommend it. Sure, it had some interesting information, but overall, I just couldn't get with Marshall's writing style and it just felt a bit, eh, juvenile I guess is the word I would use.

However, I also read a book called Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America, edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins, which is a collection of research papers about the symbolism of flags. Or like, social symbolism, social context, etc. It's not a book that's filled with tidbits of information or really anything about flag design per say, but more like, about how people relate to flags and the role that flags can play in a national identity.

I can also recommend reading articles from Raven or Flag Research Quarterly for anyone who is interested in the scholarly side of vexillology. The article Flags in Context: A Discussion of Design, Genre, and Aesthetics by Perry Dane, published in 2008, is one that I think could be of particular interest to people on this sub. It's sort of like an answer to Good Flag, Bad Flag, so yeah.

(I wrote my final thesis about flag design and the New Zealand flag referendum, so... that's why I've been nerding out on these.)