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Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism | 
 enlarge | Author: Harm De Blij
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 47198
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0195315820
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780195315820
ASIN: 0195315820
Publication Date: February 12, 2007
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Condition: NEW/UNREAD!!! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing-- Has three small black lines on bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. In House Upgrade to Expedited shipping for items valued at or totaling $40.00 or more!
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Product Description
Over the next half century, the human population, divided by culture and economics and armed with weapons of mass destruction, will expand to nearly 9 billion people. Abrupt climate change may throw the global system into chaos; China will emerge as a superpower; and Islamic terrorism and insurgency will threaten vital American interests. How can we understand these and other global challenges? Harm de Blij has a simple answer: by improving our understanding of the world's geography.
In Why Geography Matters, de Blij demonstrates how geography's perspectives yield unique and penetrating insights into the interconnections that mark our shrinking world. Preparing for climate change, averting a cold war with China, defeating terrorism: all of this requires geographic knowledge. De Blij also makes an urgent call to restore geography to America's educational curriculum. He shows how and why the U.S. has become the world's most geographically illiterate society of consequence, and demonstrates the great risk this poses to America's national security.
Peppering his writing with anecdotes from his own professional travels, de Blij provides an original treatise that is as engaging as it is eye opening. Casual or professional readers in areas such as education, politics, or national security will find themselves with a stimulating new perspective on geography as it continues to affect our world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Indispensable guide to the contemporary world August 26, 2005
Roman P (Krakow Poland)
127 out of 131 found this review helpful
H.J. de Blij is one of those rare academics and writers who has never lost focus on real issues and challenges affecting our world. As a veteran and highly skilled geographer he is diligently observant, seeks connections and relationships between issues, and places them into an essential geographic context. This is a book about three major challenges facing the US (and the world)- Climate Change, the Rise of China and Islam . It's a book that (thankfully) challenges the sterile prevailing world view and propaganda peddled by many politicians in the US and elsewhere. It is insightful, honest, extremely thought-provoking and says what needs to be said in carefully analyzed and logical sections. Finally, it is beautifully written and easy to read in a style that is engaging, interesting and rich with facts. Highly recommended. Buy it and I guarantee, you will never quite look at these specific challenges or the world in the same way again. It paints a future that is difficult and uncertain and dark in some respects. But far from hopeless. The question is whether the decision and policy makers will rise to these challenges in an enlightened and serious manner? H. J de Blij lays out the challenges in no uncertain terms - how they will be addressed by the international community and the US in particular, remains to be seen. The stakes are very high indeed.
A brilliant work September 26, 2005
Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel)
47 out of 50 found this review helpful
This quite brilliant study uses maps to explain the challenges to America and the world. He analyzes the truth about global warming and delves into the topics such as the decline of Europe and Russia, the mess of Africa and the Islamist and Chinese threat to the world. He looks at the conflict potential of powerful china vis-a-vis America. Then he looks at the `front line' of Islam, in Africa and elsewhere. We see here the true front of terror, the countries where Islam is a border state suffer the most terrorism, i.e Sudan, Nigeria, Phillipines, Israel, Yugoslavia, Russia, China. This is a concise geographers view of the world, for those who feel most books don't include enough maps this is a wonderful change, the maps here are excellent and help prove the point and enlighten the reader.
Highly recommended, this book completes the set of new books to detail the new world order(Clash of Civilizations and Pentagons New Map). A wonderfully written, daring and original work.
Seth J. Frantzman
Insightful October 1, 2005
Stuart Chase (El Paso, TX)
15 out of 22 found this review helpful
This book is quite non-partisan. It goes back through history and compares what is happening today to what has happened and what is likely to happen.
The book does it without stretching for possibilities in the future.
 hard to define book May 24, 2006
Robert Clark (Omaha Ne)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
This book covers so much information it is difficult to define. One way is as a world history with an emphasis on geography and a lecture on world politics (albeit I agree with most of his lecture). He talks primarily about climate change, population, China, Russia, Europe, Africa and terrorism.
It could have been great but there are just too many shortcomings.
1. Obviously the editor did not spend too much time on this book (i.e., misspellings and incorrect word choice and basic facts that are glaringly wrong). The issue here is missing the simple mistakes makes me wonder about his other facts. One simple mistake is 127 billion people in Japan (pg 97). This leads to the next point.
2. No footnotes, this is huge to me. Most of his facts were not backed up with a source.
3. Misquotes and incorrect definitions of words and terms.
For example, "Spy, but verify" instead of "Trust, but Verify"
Also, "spy plane" in regards to the EP-3 is factually incorrect. The EP-3 is a reconnaissance plane that was on an overt (not covert) mission over international waters.
Overall, I still enjoyed the book and recommend reading it (please skip the first chapter or at least speed read through it). I would not reference the book's facts without checking them somewhere else first.
Informative if slightly unfocused October 19, 2005
C. Griffith
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Although I did find, as one of the editorial reviews said, this book to be slightly unfocused, I believe that its virtues much outweigh this slight imperfection. De Blij provided me with relevant information that I was unaware of, such as:
1) The Shia population in Iraq generally follows a more apolitical, less publicly assertive form than the Shia in Iran. This may have some relevance to current events in Iraq.
2) Rightly or wrongly, the Chinese government has strong disagreements with a number of neighboring countries about where their mutual borders should be located.
3) The population decline in Russia is especially severe in the far eastern parts of Siberia, which isn't dense populated to begin with. Thus the migration of Korean and Chinese into these parts of Siberia could have more political implications than would be the case if there was a large Russian population in this area.
De Blij does give several examples where spatial proximity is relevant to current events, thus supporting his contention that spatial arrangements are important for predicting future events (for example recent conflicts in Africa have arisen in several countries in which the dividing line between majority non-Musim and majority Muslim populations occur). I agree with one of the editorial reviews that this is a bit vague, but I think it is nonetheless a worthwhile point to keep in mind.
He may be a bit hard on Islam, in that I can think of more than one religion that has texts that express ideas I find alarming.
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