What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is the seventh studio album from The Decemberists, released on January 20, 2015. The album's title comes from a line in the song "12/17/12", a reference to the date of Barack Obama's speech in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and lead singer Colin Meloy's conflicting feelings about the shooting and his happy personal life. "What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World" received mostly positive reviews. It currently has a metascore of 77 and user score of 8.1 from Metacritic. "The
Western world of western culture went through the new mass media: film, radio and television and recorded music, while the development and growth of international transport and telecommunication (such as Transatlantic cable and the Radiotelephone) played a decisive role in modern globalization. In modern usage, "Western world" sometimes refers to Europe and to areas whose populations largely originate from Europe, through the Age of Discovery. Western culture was influenced by many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as Phoenicia, Ancient Israel, Minoan Crete, Sumer, Babylonia, and also Ancient Egypt. It originated in the Mediterranean basin and its vicinity; Ancient