Showing titles in Human Geography

When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us? As a species we are shaped by our environment. Geological forces drove our evolution in East Africa; mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece; and today voting behaviour in the United States follows the bed of an ancient sea. The human story is the story of these forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.

THE PHENOMENAL INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER – 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD The iconic bestseller Prisoners of Geography, now fully updated with brand new content to reflect the changing global geopolitical landscape since it was first published in 2015 ‘One of the best books about geopolitics you could...

A sweeping history of the British village, both rural and urban, which makes a compelling case for why we need to protect our local communities, from bestselling author Simon Jenkins We are a nation of villages, from the rural, picturesque hamlets of Castle Combe and Clovelly, to the tight-knit...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history. Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped...

'Fascinating' TOM HOLLAND 'A delight from start to finish' MIRANDA SAWYER 'A novel and fascinating perspective on world history' BILL BRYSON 'By turns surprising, funny, bleak, ridiculous, or all four of those at once' GIDEON DEFOE 'I love this book; I love Jonn Elledge; I love the way he looks...

A powerful return to the forest, where trees have heartbeats and roots are like brains that extend underground. Where the colour green calms us, and the forest sharpens our senses. In The Heartbeat of Trees, renowned forester Peter Wohlleben draws on new scientific discoveries to show how humans are deeply connected to the natural world. In an era of climate change, many of us fear we’ve lost our connection to nature, but Wohlleben is convinced that age-old ties linking humans to the forest remain alive and intact. We just have to know where to look.

To understand how humans react and adapt to economic change we need to study people who live in harsh environments. This audiobook tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages.

Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over 15 years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life. Moving from the river's tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, what Lara calls 'the longest archaeological site in the world'.

Bloomsbury presents The Bridleway by Tiffany Francis-Baker, read by Olivia Mace. WINNER OF THE ELWYN HARTLEY-EDWARDS AWARD FOR EQUINE WRITING, 2023. Tiffany Francis-Baker explores how the relationship between humans and horses has shaped the British landscape and how this connection has become...

Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world’s largest body of water, and – in matters economic, political and military – the ocean of the future. The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the...

Is geography really destiny? Our maps may no longer be stalked by dragons and monsters, but our perceptions of the world are still shaped by geographic myths. Myths like Europe being the centre of the world. Or that border walls are the solution to migration. Or that Russia is predestined to threaten its neighbours. In his punchy and authoritative book, Paul Richardson challenges recent popular accounts of geographical determinism and shows that how we see the world represented often isn't how it really is - that the map is not the territory.

In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing t….

New from the number-one Sunday Times best-selling author of Prisoners of Geography. We feel more divided than ever. This riveting analysis tells you why. Walls are going up. Nationalism and identity politics are on the rise once more. Thousands of miles of fences and barriers have been erected in the past 10 years, and they are redefining our political landscape.

In Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, writer, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White takes listeners across the globe to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides. In the Arctic, White shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for mussels in the dark cavities left behind at low tide; in China, he races the Silver Dragon, a 25-foot tidal bore that crashes 80 miles up the Qiantang River; in France, he interviews the monks that live in the tide-wrapped monastery of Mont Saint-Michel; in Chile and Scotland, he investigates the growth of tidal power generation.

‘An inspirational call to arms’ DAILY MAIL ‘This book is so sensible, so substantially researched, so briskly written, so clear in its arguments, that one wishes Baroness Cavendish was still whispering into the prime ministerial ear’ THE TIMES ‘A thoughtful handbook to help societies...

In today's modern world, we are largely isolated from the kind of savagery our ancestors faced on a daily basis. Although violence was as natural to our evolutionary development as sex and food, it has become foreign to most of us. At once demonized and glamorized, but almost always deeply misunderstood.

A gripping exploration of how cartography shapes our world and the impact of maps on our everyday lives. ‘If you have ever wondered why an airliner bound from London to Los Angeles flies over Greenland, how we know what lies inside the Earth, or how computers correct errors, then this book is...

Audiobook narrated by the author. “A spellbinding tour de force!” —Walter Scheidel, author of What Is Ancient History? “This is non-fiction storytelling at its finest.” —Eric H. Cline, author of 1177 B.C. The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at...

The Britannias tells the story of Britain's islands and how they are woven into its collective cultural psyche. From Neolithic Orkney to modern-day Thanet, Alice Albinia explores the furthest reaches of Britain's island topography, once known (wrote Pliny) by the collective term, Britanniae. Sailing over borders, between languages and genres, trespassing through the past to understand the present, this book knocks the centre out to foreground neglected epics and subversive voices.

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator Bell Hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, Hooks explores the confounding and sometimes controversial topics that teachers and students have urged her to address since the publication of the previous best-selling volumes in her Teaching series, Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community.