12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Nice features -- but disorganized, September 14, 2003
It reads okay, but it is difficult to retrieve information as a resource for homework. The topics are inconsistant from chapter to chapter and are not oriented to the geographical topics defined in the Intro.
The topical structure needs to be rewritten to make it a better resource.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book to Own, April 13, 2011
I got this as a textbook for a geography class a few years ago. I was really surprised at how much I actually got from the class and I attribute it all to this book. It's not just about memorizing the locations of countries and cities, this book goes into detail about how and why borders are where they are. That sounds daunting, but it's very straight forward and concise and really puts it all into perspective.
I keep this on my shelf of books in my living room because I need it at hand for history classes. I come back to it again and again.
I sorta wish it had more full page maps.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I'm glad I bought this unusual book --, July 31, 2009
Unusually useful, unusually attractive, and unusually organized. This version is the 2003 version (11th ed.). Harm de Blij and Peter O. Mueller have crafted a volume I'm already well into -- and I can't wait to get some more reading time!
As a lay reader who is almost 30 years away from his last geography course ("Physical Geography"), REALMS REGIONS AND CONCEPTS is a wonderful update, but it deals only somewhat in the more physical aspects of the realm. You won't get in-depth presentations of soil types, meteorological symbols or mountain ranges, but you will get a continent-by-continent trip around the globe with a distinct interest in the human aspect of life (which the discipline calls, unsurprisingly, "Human Geography") Demographics and environmental concerns figure into the mix, too.
Narration is just a whit above pretty good; there is quite an emphasis on introducing terms special to the discipline (after all, it is a college-level text). One finds the kind of minor errors and glitches that seem endemic to popular texts like this that get updated into new editions every couple of years, even though the 2009 models are sticker-priced at over $100.
What I liked best are the interest boxes that will show you things like the population spread of the USA, or a map showing the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan -- even a map showing the difference between Chinese climate ("climatic") zones and the USA's. They make the reader compare circumstances and global problems like climate change; it's no cliche to say that this book makes the reader think.
I do understand that some people found this book a little disorganized. Part if not most of that weakness is that the text is a kind of melding of several different geographical subfields and sometimes it has to hop, not flow. GEOGRAPHY: REALMS, REGIONS AND CONCEPTS reads something like a series of erudite magazine articles with lots of photos and information boxes. On the other hand, the book is organized continent-by-continent; wasn't that the way most of us learned geography, way back in public school?
Despite the defects I've spotted, I think the advantages far outweigh the flaws, so I'm rounding the results to a solid four-star rating. Although this edition is only six years old it is already a couple of generations past being assigned as a new college text; thus decent used versions can be had for only a few dollars.
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