Nauru

Nauru is one of the strangest stories in the modern world. This single oval coral island, just 21 square kilometers in size, is the third-smallest country on Earth after Vatican City and Monaco. In the 1960s and 1970s, Nauru had the highest per-capita income of any sovereign nation on the planet, thanks to vast deposits of phosphate - millennia of accumulated seabird guano that had mineralized into a highly valuable fertilizer. For a brief, surreal period, this tiny Pacific island was fabulously wealthy.

Then the phosphate ran out. By the 1990s, Nauru's interior was a moonscape of mined-out coral pinnacles, the trust funds had been mismanaged, and the country spiraled into serious economic trouble. Today Nauru is rebuilding, relying on fishing licenses, Australian aid, and the controversial hosting of offshore immigration detention facilities. With roughly 12,000 people, no capital city in the traditional sense, and a single road circling the island, Nauru is a place that defies easy categorization. It is a cautionary tale about resource extraction, but also a story of a remarkably close-knit community that keeps going against extraordinary odds.