The Real World

Fülszöveg

UNDERSTANDING THE MODERN WORLD
THROUGH THE NEW GEOGRAPHY
These pages present better explanations
for the state of the world around us than can be
found in any other single source.
That is not an immodest claim on behalf of this
book. It is a confident commendation of the
power of geography to inform and explain the
biggest questions about life on Earth.
For geography is the true queen of sciences,
with an enormous potential for bringing clarity
to debates about the past, present, and future of
our world. The shame is that pundits from other
disciplines - historians, economists,
anthropologists — have taken center stage in the
great debates. The vital voice of geography has
been muted.
The Real World makes amends, revealing
geography's exhilarating insights into every
corner of human endeavor. Geography explains
the contents of our supermarket shelves and the
quality of the air we breathe. It can elucidate
tribal conflicts in Africa and account for the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

UNDERSTANDING THE MODERN WORLD
THROUGH THE NEW GEOGRAPHY
These pages present better explanations
for the state of the world around us than can be
found in any other single source.
That is not an immodest claim on behalf of this
book. It is a confident commendation of the
power of geography to inform and explain the
biggest questions about life on Earth.
For geography is the true queen of sciences,
with an enormous potential for bringing clarity
to debates about the past, present, and future of
our world. The shame is that pundits from other
disciplines - historians, economists,
anthropologists — have taken center stage in the
great debates. The vital voice of geography has
been muted.
The Real World makes amends, revealing
geography's exhilarating insights into every
corner of human endeavor. Geography explains
the contents of our supermarket shelves and the
quality of the air we breathe. It can elucidate
tribal conflicts in Africa and account for the
styling of our automobiles. It can argue that
humankind's landscaping is often a great
improvement on raw nature; yet it understands
better than many environmentalists the threats
to our planet's future.
With the pointers geography can give, a
neighborhood stroll becomes a new adventure,
whereby the patterns of streets and alleys, the
distribution of rich and poor, and the variation
of brick and stone make sense. And our
perceptions of distant peoples become subject to
an informed and rational sympathy as
geography accounts for the "peculiarities" of
their behavior.
Even maps, those most feared of schoolroom
tools, assume a reassuring new purpose: not as
earnest cribsheets, reminding us that we don't
know where anywhere is, but as a game board
for many-leveled voyages of discovery.
In The Real World, geography is no longer a
recitation of capital city names and the
definition of a peninsula. It is indeed the real
world of people and places we know.
Jacket Photographs (left to right) Landsat of
central California (Science Photo Library);
Dallas, Texas (Tony Stone); Hong Kong stock
exchange (Telegraph Color Library); Rice
terracing, Philippines (Rex Features). Vissza