Prisioneros de la geografía

There is a limit to what men can decide. Often times, this is a real, physical limit. Mountains, rivers, seas and concrete stand between what leaders have wanted for their countries throughout history and what they have been able to achieve. To understand and explain what is happening in the world we usually refer to people, ideas and political movements; but without the conditions imposed by geography, the result of such an approximation is simply incomplete. Many of the planet's landforms will continue to exist in the future. A century from now, Russia will continue to look to the west with anguish, and will continue to find there a plain difficult to defend. The Himalayas will continue to separate India and Pakistan and largely prevent a direct confrontation. Florida will continue to be the guardian that watches the entry and exit to the Gulf of Mexico, regardless of the country it belongs to. With that starting point, and through ten maps -of Russia, China, the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India / Pakistan, Korea / Japan, Latin America and the Arctic- Tim Marshall looks to the past, to the present and into the future of humanity in this book, an exceptional and accessible piece of research, highly successful in the UK and Germany, which has opened the eyes of many to one of the greatest (and most overlooked) factors that determine world history .