Overview

The globetrotting story of how humans have harnessed the geographical landscape and written ourselves onto our surroundings. Mountains, meridians, rivers, and borders--these are some of the features that divide the world on our maps and in our minds. But geography is far less set in stone than we might believe, and, as Maxim Samson's Earth Shapers contends, in our relatively short time on this planet, humans have become experts at fundamentally reshaping our surroundings. From the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca's ""great road,"" and Mozambique's colonial railways to a Saudi Arabian smart city, and from Korea's sacred Baekdu-daegan mountain range and the Great Green Wall in Africa to the streets of Chicago, Samson explores how we mold the world around us. And how, as we etch our needs onto the natural landscape, we alter the course of history. These fascinating stories of connectivity show that in our desire to make geographical connections, humans have broken through boundaries of all kinds, conquered treacherous terrain, and carved up landscapes. We crave linkages, and though we do not always pay attention to the in-between, these pathways--these ways of ""earth shaping,"" in Samson's words--are key to understanding our relationship with the planet we call home. An immense work of cultural geography touching on ecology, sociology, history, and politics, Earth Shapers argues that, far from being constrained by geography, we are instead its creators.

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9780226844749

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Reviews

""A chance to see the world anew through the eyes of a wonderfully curious new writer.""-- ""The Observer, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""A compelling exploration.""-- ""The Miramichi Reader, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""A fascinating exploration of the lesser-known and more subtle borders across the earth and the surprising ways in which they shape our lives.""-- ""i news, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""A fascinating, detailed exploration of the hidden boundaries that carve up the world. . . . It is a pleasure to accompany Samson to the Malaria Belt, inside eruvim (markers of a single domestic space within which fewer Sabbath regulations apply), or along the border of Portugal to discover why vultures prefer not to cross it.""-- ""The Telegraph, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""A triumph, a volume of great good sense and imagination which brims with fascinations. . . . Endlessly interesting.""-- ""The Spectator, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""An illuminating glimpse of the chain reactions of human and physical geography.""-- ""Financial Times, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""Fascinating. . . . A truly original adventure into new ways of exploring a sense of place.""--Simon Jenkins, on ""Invisible Lines"" ""Intricately detailed explanation of how each invisible line came to be, as well as what it can tell us about the world and our place within it. . . . A fascinating read.""-- ""Geographical, on ""Invisible Lines"""" ""Old worlds enhanced, new worlds exposed and challenged. . . . A wise and thought-provoking series of raids across borders we thought we knew and others made visible to us, by Samson's forensic eye.""--Iain Sinclair, on ""Invisible Lines"" ""Utterly engrossing! Samson's literary atlas of the world's unseen boundaries and how they've shaped our lives demands to be read.""--Lewis Dartnell, author of ""Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History,"" on ""Invisible Lines"" ""Earth Shapers tells stories that have been ignored because they do not fit the old narrative; [this is] a book that reshapes our story of global human geography.""--Danny Dorling, 1971 Professor of Geography, University of Oxford ""Samson's clear and concise writing, his engaging style and the wide range of topics he covers make Invisible Lines an absorbing study of the boundaries we set to divide and demarcate the physical and cultural worlds and how this affects us in our day-to-day lives.""-- ""Winnipeg Free Press, on ""Invisible Lines""""

Author Information

Maxim Samson is a geographer and the author of Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World. An award-winning educator and researcher, he has taught and presented keynote lectures at universities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Indonesia. In addition to working as an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago, he is the immediate past chair of the American Association of Geographers' Religions and Belief Systems research specialty group and serves as associate editor of the Journal of Jewish Education. In his free time, he enjoys long-distance running and exploring the culture and language of his favorite country, Indonesia.

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