Prisoners of Geography

I love the topic of geography and maybe that's why I found this book on the thin side. I didn't learn much that I didn't already know. Overall it's a decent book that reads like a series of magazine articles. If you're not familiar with geopolitics this is a great introduction. And as long as you don't expect more than introductory level thinking about this topic then you'll probably like it. I was hoping for more.

A really interesting brief discussion of each of several politically interesting parts of the world and how physical geography has either propelled or restrained the people and governments there. I don't know enough to say whether the arguments would stand up to serious scrutiny, but it's certainly an interesting point of view which doesn't often get discussed in news stories of conflicts between countries.

Having said that, sometimes I got the feeling that the arguments can become a bit circular. The same geographical situation in one case might be an explanation of a country's success while in another it is something the population have failed to capitalise on. In this case, I start to wonder how much the geography has explanatory power. All very interesting though and an extra dimension when considering world politics.