Overview

In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe's pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland. Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only twenty-three percent of its people from land that is only seven percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan's porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India's main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage. A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century's looming cataclysms.

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Reviews

A solid work of acuity and breadth.-- ""Kirkus""

"A solid work of acuity and breadth.-- ""Kirkus"""

Author Information

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of over a dozen books on foreign affairs and travel, including Balkan Ghosts, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, and was recently the distinguished visiting professor in national security at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Robert is a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Michael Prichard has recorded more than 500 full-length audiobooks. He received an Audie Award for Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman and was named a Top Ten Golden Voice by SmartMoney magazine. He has also received several AudioFile Earphones Awards for works including At All Costs by Sam Moses and In Nixon's Web by L. Patrick Gray III. His has narrated works by Mark Twain, John Cheever, and John Updike, and read Fritjof Capra's book The Web of Life for Macmillan Audio. In addition to his audiobook work, Prichard is an actor on screen and stage, including as a member of Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company. He performed the role of Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451, a performance for which Bradbury dubbed him ""the finest Beatty in history."" Prichard holds an M.F.A. in theater from the University of Southern California. Michael Prichard has recorded more than 500 full-length audiobooks. He received an Audie Award for Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman and was named a Top Ten Golden Voice by SmartMoney magazine. He has also received several AudioFile Earphones Awards for works including At All Costs by Sam Moses and In Nixon's Web by L. Patrick Gray III. His has narrated works by Mark Twain, John Cheever, and John Updike, and read Fritjof Capra's book The Web of Life for Macmillan Audio. In addition to his audiobook work, Prichard is an actor on screen and stage, including as a member of Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company. He performed the role of Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451, a performance for which Bradbury dubbed him ""the finest Beatty in history."" Prichard holds an M.F.A. in theater from the University of Southern California.

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