Best for: Anyone interested in a basic understanding of how the earth has influenced politics across the world. In a nutshell: Author Tim Marshall breaks the world into ten regions and gives an overview of how different geographic and cultural components (rivers, deserts, mountains, harbors, tribes) have affected different political decisions. Worth quoting: “The better your relationship with Russia, the less you pay for energy; for example, Finland get a better deal than the Baltic States.” “China has locked itself into the global economy. If […]
Good for Traveling, Not for Entertainment
I can remember back to middle school when we’d get the Scholastic book order catalogs, I’d skip over the Goosebumps, Encyclopedia Brown, and other stock middle school series, to get right to the section on geography. Be it a book on flags of the world, a specific region of the world, it didn’t matter; I wanted it! When the book would arrive I’d race home and begin absorbing all of the information it had to offer. This turned into travel lust as a teenager and […]