Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

by Tim Marshall

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Marshall argues that physical geography - rivers, mountains, coastlines, and climate - remains the hidden constraint behind every nation's foreign policy, from Russia's anxiety about the North European Plain to China's hunger for blue-water ports. Through ten maps he shows how leaders from Putin to Xi to American presidents are still, in essence, prisoners of the terrain their countries inherited.

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291
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In the Conversation

In this collection, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics references 3 other books.

It draws on Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Art of War and The Lessons of History.

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What This Book Draws On

3

The books Marshall references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Extends Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel argument that geography shapes destiny from prehistory into twenty-first-century statecraft, translating environmental determinism into geopolitical strategy

Guns, Germs, and Steel

References

Guns, Germs, and Steel

by Jared Diamond

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Updates Sun Tzu's Art of War teachings on terrain and positioning by showing how satellite-era militaries are still constrained by the same mountains, choke points, and river basins

The Art of War

References

The Art of War

by Sun Tzu

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Applies Durant's Lessons of History dictum that geography is the matrix of history to contemporary flashpoints in Ukraine, Kashmir, and the Arctic

The Lessons of History

References

The Lessons of History

by Will Durant

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The Lessons of HistoryGuns, Germs, and SteelThe Art of War

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