Prisoners of Geography
Saturday, 1 April 2017
Prisoners of Geography is subtitled ‘Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics’ although Tim Marshall’s book is in fact rather more than maps and geography and there are rather more than 10 maps. Never mind it’s a handy summary of the situation of the world today, the history may stretch back, but it’s really the contemporary situation Mr Marshall is looking at ‘geopolitics’ is indeed what it’s all about.
If you want to understand the Russian obsession with Crimea, why so much of the Middle East is a mess, why the USA is a superpower (nothing to do with Trump), why so much world attention is heading north to the Arctic, there are certainly lots of suggestions, if not firm conclusions here.
Incidentally there could easily have been 11th and 12th chapter – after Russia, China, USA, Western Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India & Pakistan, Korea & Japan, Latin America and The Arctic – what about the Pacific & Australia and Southeast Asia?
