Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism (Paperback)

~ Harm de Blij (Author) "Ten years ago it seemed that the world could not possibly change any faster than it had over the previous decade..." (more)
Key Phrases: environmental swings, geographic illiteracy, geographic realm, United States, Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

De Blij, a geography professor and former National Geographic Society editor, seeks to rekindle interest in his discipline with this unfocused survey of the world and its discontents. Struggling to describe his notoriously hard-to-define field, de Blij suggests that geographers "look at things spatially" as opposed to "temporally" or "structurally," the "things" being a grab bag of phenomena, including climate, topography, demographics, national boundaries and the distribution of languages, religions, energy deposits and pipelines. It's an often illuminating perspective, nicely visualized in the book's many splendid maps. Unfortunately, while mapping things spatially is a very useful methodology, it doesn't add up to a coherent analytical framework, and often boils down to simply compiling information about places. As a result, de Blij's discussions of global developments, including European integration, the decline of Russia, Africa's ongoing travails and the three challenges mentioned in the title, amount to extremely well-informed but hardly groundbreaking rehashes of conventional wisdom. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Geography professor de Blij writes from a conviction that not only the American public but also government officials can be dangerously ignorant of basic geography, so to enlighten them he discusses three topics with national security implications. His tour of Islamic radicalism has the most immediate relevance and, buttressed by a profusion of maps, it covers Afghanistan, Iraq, the Islamic "front" in sub-Saharan Africa, and--Paraguay? Learning the significance of that outlier to the geography of Islamic terrorism (as well as its unappeasable aims) typifies many of de Blij's informational surprises, which are arranged clearly and spiced with the author's allusions to his career and travels, including China. His observations of attitudes and changes he's seen there are sober divinations of the cold war potential vis-a-vis China and the U.S. The putative threat of global warming receives de Blij's somewhat contrarian assessment, an outgrowth of his geographic summary of the ice age gripping the earth right now, geologically speaking. Accessible expertise vital for the current-events display. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195315820
• ISBN-13: 978-0195315820
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,562 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #21 in	Books > Science > Earth Sciences > Geography > Regional
  #25 in	Books > Science > Earth Sciences > Climatology > Climate Changes
  #35 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Geography

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

128 of 132 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable guide to the contemporary world, August 26, 2005

By	Roman P (Krakow Poland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism (Hardcover)

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.

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant work, September 26, 2005

By	Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism (Hardcover)

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-à-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

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative if slightly unfocused, October 19, 2005

By	C. Griffith - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism (Hardcover)

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.