Subtitled "Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know about Global Politics"

I picked this up in Heathrow Airport as I was connecting there at the beginning of a trip to the Balkans. It was published in 2015 with a few updates in this edition from 2019. As I read it in 2022, that seems like it should be reasonably current but some very big things have happened including the Covid pandemic, the USA pulling out of Afghanistan, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Although, of course, those exact things couldn't be foreseen in detail, the book remains surprisingly accurate in those areas. I'm pretty ignorant about geography outside of the places I've personally lived or traveled. This book was a reasonable introduction to what are, perhaps, basic issues for anyone who has paid attention.

I looked in vain for information about Sudan, where I lived for a while in 2020. Africa is a huge continent which had only a very small section of this book. There's a 2021 sequel called The Power of Geography, and I think that may do the region more justice.

In any case, I'm going to count this for the 2022 Beanstack+ Reading Challenge in the category "A book you should have read in school" because I'd have been better educated if I'd had a geography book which seemed relevant and interesting.

Releasing in the Little Free Library outside Van Wyck Middle School. Enjoy!