The Power of Geography
Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World
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4.5 • 23 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography, a fascinating, “refreshing, and very useful” (The Washington Post) follow-up that uses ten maps to explain the challenges to today’s world powers and how they presage a volatile future.
Tim Marshall’s global bestseller Prisoners of Geography offered us a “fresh way of looking at maps” (The New York Times Book Review), showing how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and walls. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed, but the world has.
Now, in this “wonderfully entertaining and lucid account, written with wit, pace, and clarity” (Mirror, UK), Marshall takes us into ten regions set to shape global politics. Find out why US interest in the Middle East will wane; why Australia is now beginning an epic contest with China; how Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the UK are cleverly positioning themselves for greater power; why Ethiopia can control Egypt; and why Europe’s next refugee crisis looms closer than we think, as does a cutting-edge arms race to control space.
Innovative, compelling, and delivered with Marshall’s trademark wit and insight, this is “an immersive blend of history, economics, and political analysis that puts geography at the center of human affairs” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mountains, deserts, and distances still leave a deep mark on national character and international relations, according to this fascinating exploration of geopolitics. Journalist Marshall (Prisoners of Geography) spotlights nine places, including Africa's Sahel region, Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, whose locale, terrain, and climate shape their destinies. A dominant theme is how mountains weaken national stability by nurturing minority cultures and separatist movements in places like Scotland, Spain's Basque region, and Turkey's Kurdish areas. Deserts play a similarly disruptive role: the arid northern reaches of nations in the Sahel are incubating tribal Islamist movements that could tear them apart, and dry, thirsty Egypt has threatened war over Ethiopia's damming of the Nile's headwaters. Sheer proximity remains a perennial source of friction, as Australia frets about China's encroaching naval presence and Greece and Turkey bicker over Aegean islands and their surrounding undersea gas fields. Marshall also examines superpower rivalry in space, which threatens the world's indispensable satellite systems. Sprinkling the text with his own entertaining picaresques—precariously riding a camel, getting assaulted by cops at an Iranian street protest—Marshall offers an immersive blend of history, economics, and political analysis that puts geography at the center of human affairs. Maps.
