International Who’s Who (77th edition)

The International Who’s Who aspires to list the 25,000 most eminent people in the world (1,000 being new to the present edition), although not much is revealed about the criteria for inclusion. A not entirely scientific sample of one per cent of the entries suggested that less than a sixth of them are women and about two-thirds might broadly be considered “Western”. About 20 per cent seem to be from the United States and 17 per cent from Britain, although these two countries between them account for less than six per cent of the world’s population. This seems to indicate...