Geography Book Reviews
Reviews about geography publications. Reviewed here are atlases, poetry, novels, and geography related non-fiction.
License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport | Geography Book Review
More anecdotal than history, License to Travel is both an engaging and instructive book.
Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World | Book Review
Ian Morris provides a most-useful survey history of Britain from geologic time to the present centered around three maps.
Book Review | The Cartographers
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd is a suspense novel with a cartographic twist.
Review | Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption
'Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption' by Mitchell Schwarzer is a superb example of urban history.
Review | Extinctions: Living and Dying in the Margin of Error
This book sets out, in some nine chapters, both the ‘turbulent’ journey of that one species living 3.7 billion years ago to the 8.7 million today and the human activity threatening that biodiversity.
Review | Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin
Talking at the Gates by James Campbell is a biography of James Baldwin, one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century.
Review | Under the Wave at Waimea
Set in Hawaii and with a champion surfer as its central character, "Under the Wave at Waimea" introduces us to the global geography of surfing.
Review | Lure of the Beach: A Global History
Robert C. Ritchie guides readers through a comprehensive history of mankind’s love affair with the beach.
Review | We Are the Land: A History of Native California
We Are the Land: A History of Native California recounts the perspective of the California Indians.
Review | Yellowstone Wolves: Science and Discovery in the World’s First National Park
This book is a collaborative effort to investigate the successes and failures of the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park
Review: Time in Maps
Time in Maps is a sumptuously-illustrated large-sized book that serves as a celebration of the development of GIS.
Review | The Selected Letters of Cassiodorus: A Sixth-Century Sourcebook
A millennium and a half ago, or so, if you wanted to break away from the western Roman Empire, you simply called in the barbarians.
Review | Dreamers and Schemers
Barry Siegel's "Dreamers and Schemers" features William May Garland who propelled LA's early development into a major metropolis through his ‘irresistible life force’ of salesmanship.
Review | The 99% Invisible City
The 99% Invisible City explains the small mysteries in our everyday urban geography.
Review: Maps for Time Travelers
A survey of the geospatial technological advances which have enabled today’s archaeologists to map the ancient world.
Review | A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety
This is a self-help book about how each of us, both personally and together, can deal with the angst of confronting this seemingly intractable problem of climate change.
Review | Rivers of Power
Rivers shape the surface of our planet and play a role in human history. Review of Rivers of Power by G.T. Dempsey.
Review | Dangerous Earth
G.T. Dempsey reviews Ellen Prager's Dangerous Earth: What We Wish We Knew about Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Climate Change, Earthquakes, and More.
Review | Phantom Islands: In Search of Mythical Lands
In this book, Dirk Liesener provides the life-stories of islands, some thirty of them, which though thought to exist in some cases for many centuries turned out to either not be an island or to have never existed to start with.
Review | The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success
This is a most useful primer on climate change and its consequences.
Review | The Best American Travel Writing 2019
The 'Best American Travel Writing 2019' features pieces on either dangerous places or the pursuit of the exotic as well-informed as they are well-written.
Review | Peary’s Arctic Quest
Peary’s Arctic Quest: Untold Stories from Robert E. Peary’s North Pole Expeditions is both a rigorous scholarly work and a popular exposition of Robert Peary’s Arctic achievements and his legacy.
Review | On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey
In On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey, Theroux is determined to experience the real Mexico, as a traveler, not a tourist.
Review | Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA
Sprawlball demonstrates how basketball – that is, its professional incarnation in the NBA – has become a game of analytics.
Review | Horizon
Horizon by Barry Lopez can, perhaps, be best described as an intellectual autobiography by means of geography and the abiding truths of the natural world.
Review | Who Owns England?
The concentration of wealth – in England, particularly landed wealth – is a most serious issue.