Synopses & Reviews
WorldMinds provides broad exposure to a geography that is engaged with discovery, interpretation, and problem solving. Its 100 succinct chapters demonstrate the theories, methods, and data used by geographers, and address the challenges posed by issues such as globalization, regional and ethnic conflict, environmental hazards, terrorism, poverty, and sustainable development. Through its theoretical and practical applications, we are reminded that the study of Geography informs policy making.
Synopsis
Geography today is a vibrant amalgam of theories, methods, and data about past, current, and emerging worlds. Geography and the geographers who produce it dwell at the intersection of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and various admixtures of their theories, methods, and data constitute the 100 chapters included in WorldMinds. Arrayed under the rubrics of politics and power, human wellbeing, cities, livelihood, ecosystems, human environment interactions, hazards, natural systems, new methods, and human perceptions, these 100 short essays reveal and exemplify the conceptual and topical richness of contemporary North American geography. As is evident in these rubrics and essays, geography today is a many splendored enterprise ranging, as the editors note, "from feminist deconstruc tion to fluvial geomorphology." Geographers have something strikingly valuable to say about many, if not most of the problems that confront indi viduals and groups in locales and regions ranging from the plots of smallholders to the entire globe. The diverse chapters of WorldMinds well illustrate some of the key geographical perspectives that contribute usefully to the broader understanding of common problems."