Books with information about many world countries or regions?

I'm looking for a book that is a good primer on most world countries, not just statistics but summaries of things like their economies and political systems and major issues and brief history and cultures and conflicts etc. The kind of stuff you might learn in a comparative politics lecture or something. 5-10 pages on a country or so (maybe less, if big pages or small text, even). Basically something enough to know more than just really surface two-paragraphs-and-then-stats stuff like the CIA World Factbook, something with a little more depth of explanation and analysis and stuff. Can anyone suggest some useful books along those lines? Thanks.