Geography is unfair,” Ian Morris writes, and if “geography is destiny”, as he also contends, then this is a recipe for a world in which the strong remain strong and the weak remain weak. Geopoliticians excel at explaining why things won’t change. They’re less adept at explaining how things do.

The book also explores Iran. Walking the reader through the mountains of Iran and its huge landscape it puts Iranian history into perspective due to its mountainous geography.

Book Detail :

In the first book, "Prisoners of Geography", Tim Marshall delivered what he promised. It focused on the physical geography of regions or nations and connected it to that nation's political and military strategies. I enjoyed reading it, and learned a fair bit about geopolitics.

After three years as IRN’s Paris correspondent and extensive work for BBC radio and TV, Tim joined Sky News. Reporting from Europe, the USA and Asia, Tim became Middle East Correspondent based in Jerusalem.Readers familiar with Marshall’s first book, Prisoners of Geography,will not be surprised with the format of each of the ten chapters. Each chapter focuses on a country and starts by describing the key geographical characteristics and then a brief history before explaining how its current territory affects its geopolitics. The books simple format is easy to follow but could be accused of repetition, especially when referring to what keeps Generals awake at nightappears constantly. The book opens with a chapter on Australia. As an Australian I found it quite interesting reading a perspective on my country and people... “Now Australia looks around at its neighbourhood and wonders what role it should play, and whom it should play it with”... “Australia’s size and location are both it’s strength and its weakness...” There is a name for Marshall’s line of thinking: geopolitics. Although the term is often used loosely to mean “international relations”, it refers more precisely to the view that geography – mountains, land bridges, water tables – governs world affairs. Ideas, laws and culture are interesting, geopoliticians argue, but to truly understand politics you must look hard at maps. And when you do, the world reveals itself to be a zero-sum contest in which every neighbour is a potential rival, and success depends on controlling territory, as in the boardgame Risk. In its cynical view of human motives, geopolitics resembles Marxism, just with topography replacing class struggle as the engine of history. p. 176 - "In the 1990s Turkey had re-established itself as a major trade route after building gas and oil pipes running from Iraq and the Caspian Sea through Anatolia to supply Europe. It had also put together one of the largest and most efficient militaries in NATO, giving it confidence as it assessed the new world around it."