9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dishonest, incomplete, inaccurate, and economically illiterate, February 6, 2009
This review is from: World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives (with Subregions) (Paperback)
The Pulsiphers' World Regional Geography is the worst textbook I have ever read. If I had not held the book in my hands, I would hardly believe that such trash could find a publisher. It is infuriating to consider how much care and effort thousands of aspiring writers have lavished on works that will never see the light of day, while W.H. Freeman launches this sloppy collection of nonsense into university bookstores to be foisted off on unsuspecting students.
The first sin of this geography book is to completely ignore 71% of the Earth's surface. There is no discussion of oceanic geography, and no mention of the IHO's addition of the Southern Ocean to the four traditional oceans. There is no meaningful description of marine life, except for a completely false statement that scientists believe the great whales will soon be extinct (while some whale species may indeed die out, blue and humpback populations are recovering). Military geography and geopolitics receive scant attention.
The authors discard the traditional continent-by-continent approach to geography in favor of a "regional" analysis. While the continental approach certainly has its drawbacks, the regional system proffered in this book is no improvement. The Pulsiphers' system completely omits Antarctica - 14 million square kilometers of the Earth's land! The new regional nomenclature is confusing, as when it calls the region between the Rio Grande and the Arctic Ocean by the old name of "North America," which traditionally describes the continent from the Isthmus of Panama northward. Other names are too cumbersome to use, like "Middle and South America" or worse, "Russia and the Newly Independent States." Lastly, no common method has been used for designating the different regions.
The book's content is even more flawed than its presentation. The most charitable explanation for the book's misinformation is carelessness and unbelievable ignorance, as when it states that Islam came to East Africa in the 6th century (p. 406). Did the authors not know that Muhammed first preached Islam in the year 613, or did they fail to realize that year 613 is in the 7th century, not the 6th? Likewise, one may hope that when the authors state that urban sprawl increases U.S. need for food imports (p. 82), they are simply unaware that the U.S. is not dependent on food imports at all, but is rather the world's largest net food exporter.
Other sections show sloppy thinking or incomplete argument. For example, after describing the increase of CO2 emissions and global warming caused by logging in the Amazon, the authors sadly state that American consumers often fail to ask where their wood products come from (p. 153). Why would a tree felled in the Amazon release more CO2 than a tree felled in, say, the Pacific Northwest? Indeed, it appears from the book that environmentally concerned consumers should, if anything, prefer to buy Amazon hardwoods because the Amazon rain forest regrows faster than temperate forests do.
Still other falsehoods cannot be explained except as deliberate lies to further a political agenda. Such, for example, is the claim that in 2006 Hamas bowed to international pressure and recognized Israel (p. 328). No such recognition has ever occurred; as of 2008, Hamas leaders were still stating that they would never recognize Israel. For another example, the Pulsiphers tell us that for the first half of the 20th century, Cuba and Puerto Rico were controlled by U.S.-backed dictatorial regimes (p. 160). This is a fair cop so far as Cuba is concerned, but to describe Puerto Rico's popularly elected territorial government as "dictatorial" is simply a lie.
I will grudgingly grant a few merits to the book. It is well illustrated. And despite an otherwise pervasive whitewashing of indigenous cultures, the authors do not shy away from the horrors of female circumcision in Africa; furthermore, they treat the matter with due care, avoiding racist generalizations. Still, there surely must be some textbook that treats this subject equally well while avoiding this book's egregious falsehoods on other topics.
There are many more cases of poor organization, errors, and lies in World Regional Geography than I have listed here. But these certainly ought to be enough to dissuade department heads from forcing their poor students to shell out $117.13 of their hard-earned money for a book that will hamper rather than improve their knowledge of the world we live in.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Biased, political, innappropriate for a 'text' book, October 3, 2009
This review is from: World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives (with Subregions) (Paperback)
I am halfway through this book, and I find it to be written completely from the authors' biased points of view. It has a lot of anti- american sentiment and blames most of the problems of the world on any country or group that has had any money/success. I don't mind a liberal point of view, as I consider myself to be a moderate (politcally), but this goes a bit beyond my idea of what a 'geography' book should be presenting. There is also a lot of attention paid to the little, tiny country of Slovenia, which just happens to be where the authors are from), while major countries in Europe and the rest of the world are covered in 1/2 a paragraph. The intro chapter talks about Slovenia's dying language, the European section talks about Slovenia splitting from the European Union. We have to read a case study about the Changing Agricultural business in Slovenia....My goodness!
Honestly, I don't have much to say that is very positive about the book. Instead of giving it's readers the facts and allowing them to come up with their own educated point of veiw, the point of view of the author is shoved down student's throats.
This book would be fine as an editorial piece of work, but it shouldn't be a textbook.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Holy Wow, October 31, 2010
This review is from: World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives (with Subregions) (Paperback)
All that I will say is HOLY WOW.
As described by other reviews lots of political trash in this book. Also nothing about the oceans as a whole, and nothing about Antarctica. I'm not going to reproduce what others have said, only I do agree with what they have said.
One thing I will add, I thought there was way too much information for anyone trying to keep pace with a college class. Some chapters are 100+ pages on lots of information, which sadly much of it never is retained due to the shear amount of it. I'm sure there is a better way to present the information in an easier to retain way.
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