Charles's Reviews > Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

Survey of geopolitics influenced by physical geography with emphasis on the late-20th and early 21st Centuries. A dated 2015-oriented prognostication of the future, was included.


The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size and shape of land masses approaching the poles.

My audiobook copy was almost nine (9) hours long. A dead tree copy would be about 300-pages. The book had an original 2015 UK copyright. My audiobook had a 2016 US copyright.

The author, Tim Marshall is a British journalist, author and broadcaster, specializing in foreign affairs and international diplomacy. He has written 7-books. These include the four (4) books of his Politics of Place series, of which this is the first. This is the first book I’ve read by the author.

The narrator, Scott Brick is an American actor, writer and narrator of audiobooks. Brick has narrated hundreds of audiobooks. I’m familiar with his work. He’s quite effective as a narrator for fiction. That includes: thrillers, mysteries, speculative fiction and fantasy. However, he was an unfortunate choice for this non-fiction work. His performance was too theatrical, for this piece of nonfiction.

This was an intermediate-level work on geopolitics. Having a general knowledge of world geography and history, particularly the history of the late 20th Century and the first two decades of the 21st is needed to completely leverage its contents.

This book was a cherry-picked, pessimistic, survey of historical, present and potential future geopolitical events with emphasis on the last 75-years and a future 25-years (?) influenced by physical geography.

Ten individual countries or regional agglomerations were targeted. Most of these were countries or geographical regions that were news hot-spots. Countries and regions typically absent from news feeds were given short shrift. (For example, Australia and the Maghreb region of North Africa.) The strongest analysis was of Russia and China, the weakest were Latin/South America and Africa.

The writing was good and very approachable. It showed the author's journalistic vs. an academic’s background in capturing their audience. In places, it was witty. The use of anecdotes and quotes were also good.

This book has very much from a western perspective. That is, the general slant of the book was to interpret history, and particularly post-WWII events towards the advantage or disadvantage (with some exceptions), of the G8 countries, but particularly Anglo-American interests.

Effects of physical geography on geopolitics were very traditional. However, First Principals were never first laid-out. Yet, they were were repetitively referenced. For example, the historical importance of Lebensraum with deep alluvial soils leading towards regional agricultural success and providing food security.

Current pressure for hydrocarbon-based energy and water resources dominated the future-history discussion. Black Swan events, like the COVID-19 pandemic or a fusion-energy breakthrough (electricity too cheap to meter) were not taken into consideration in the author's linear future predictions.

Traditional influences on geopolitics, were a mixed bag. For example, how the use of the Mercator map projection becomes politically sensitive as it can wrongly shape deciders perception of the world was mentioned. Control practices and policies such as Colonialism and its effects were well-covered. Likewise, the anticipated effects of climate change also received the author’s attention. However, while tribalism was mentioned, anthropological influences on geopolitics were passed-over quickly. In addition, the historical effects of technology on geopolitics, particularly extrapolating their effects into the future were weak.

Ear-reading this book was an unfortunate choice by me. Despite having graduated from university with a degree in Geography and having kept abreast of recent world history, my knowledge of the Earth’s physical topography has dimmed and recent border changes were absent. I’ve gone back and inspected the physical book’s 10 maps. Despite the hyperbole of the subtitle, having The 10 Maps That Explain Everything About the World within eyesight would have been of great advantage to me when 'reading' this book. Frankly, having a proper atlas on-hand, like the Oxford Atlas of the World (current ed. 27th) would have been better than the included maps. I note the author used the The Times Universal Atlas of the World . (Geographers have strong feelings about their map sources.)

In addition, this book includes a Bibliography and Index, which while absent from the audiobook they would likewise be handy to a reader. In particular, the Bibliography contains an interesting mix of both Popular Culture and Academic references. For example, books by Jared Diamond and Russell F. Weigley (an old professor of mine). However, the works referenced for some countries and regions was remarkably scant.

Any regular reader of the The Economist will be familiar with the information included in this book. One of the more interesting parts of it was reading the author’s predictions of the future from 2015. (Seven (7) years ago from this writing.) In particular with regard to Russia.

However, Geopolitics is the effect of Earth’s geography on politics and international relations. Its, Earth, Air (including weather), and Water and Men (and Women), Technology, and Organizations (armies, religions, political movements). This book was a collection of brief articles on the past, present, and possible future of seven (7) individual countries and five (5) regions all loosely hung together.

Where the book failed, was it didn’t teach the reader to create their own models of geopolitics from the fundamentals of the effects of geography on politics except by example. For example, for one of the book’s also rans (barely mentioned) countries like Australia. What are the prospects of a small, western population on a mostly arid, resource rich, isolated continent-sized island, on the edge a burgeoning Chinese sphere-of-influence, at the End of the American Century?

In summary, this book was prosumer edutainment for news junkies. Its successful in giving them a journalistically polished background on newsfeed hotspots as well as a dated (at this late writing) futurist's forecast of next season’s episodes. For uncovered countries or sub-regions, its left as an exercise for the ill-prepared reader to figure it out.

I can recommend several of the books from this one’s bibliography to readers: How to Lie with Maps , The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy , The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate , Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century , and The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History .