Play Book Tag discussion

Geography is admittedly, not something I’ve ever been good at. I liked the way this book was laid out with maps at the beginning of each chapter so I could continually check back to see what area the author was discussing. Although the book was shelved as ‘Africa’ 21 times (I had to double check) Africa the continent was only covered in one chapter. However, read in its entirety, the book does discuss the surrounding countries and how the history and politics relate to African countries, histories, and politics. And that’s what I appreciated about this book. I learned about Africa and the middle east and the different people in that area and how colonialism has caused much of the conflicts we see today. If someone is well versed in geography and politics, this book may not be a good fit as I’m sure the author only scratched the surface of underlying problems facing our world today. But for someone who knows Libya is somewhere over there [waves hand vaguely to the east] this is a solid introductory book.

[Note: I'm listed in PBT spreadsheet as 'Heather C']

Heather, thanks for reminding me about this book. I started it last month when I was reading about Russia, and I found it interesting. I agree it's not for experts, but it's great for someone like me who hasn't studied geography in many decades. It's perfect for this year as we're reading books from all over the world.

My F2F book club really enjoyed this when we read it a couple of years ago. Really made us appreciate how "geographically" fortunate we are in the USA.