The Revenge of Geography

What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

By: Robert D. Kaplan

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe's pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland.

Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only twenty-three percent of its people from land that is only seven percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan's porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India's main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage.

A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century's looming cataclysms.

©2012 Robert D. Kaplan (P)2012 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A solid work of acuity and breadth." ( Kirkus)

Thought provoking

The book lays a good foundation to consider world events. It is refreshing not to have a partisan or political spin.

Flat reading

The reading of this book was so flat and dull that made a wonderful book sound boring.

Good book

Starts slow, builds on ideas midway through the end. The last chapter seems very relavent to today's issues.

Eye Opener

This audiobook does a good job of looking at regional issues and logically attempts to explain what to look out for and how it could impact the region and the rest of the world.

Amazingly current with a strong argument for geographical forces at work today.

This was a fascinating review of the geographical forces that juxtaposed against political forces, and the interplay between them.

Exhaustive and impressive review of geopolitics

The first part of this book explains historical geopolitical thinkers and how many of their their geopolitical based observations and predictions, amazingly, long ago anticipated our current world. The second part of the book is a geopolitical analysis of a list of the worlds current major countries and the challenges we, the US and the democratic west , may face in the near future. Brilliant.

Why Don't They Teach This Stuff?

In "The Importance of Being Earnest," Oscar Wilde's very upright English aristocrat Lady Bracknell says something like " I hate arguments; they are so often convincing."

Well, this book is a convincing and not-altogether-welcome argument, but an important and sobering one nevertheless. Using rock-solid evidence from lots of sources (modern and historical), Robert Kaplan tells us why we shouldn't dismiss geography as a determiner of politics simply because technology has made the world so "small". Our assumption that the whole world would be democratic if it just had the chance and the right example has tripped the US (and others) up most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The overturn of oppressive governments in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and potentially Syria may not be turning out the way we thought/hoped they would either.

So, woe to those who don't know or heed the lessons of history and the enormous influence that geography has always had on the peoples of the world! I suppose this should be self-evident, but it wasn't made clear in the history classes I took.

Many of the theories of geopolitical history and warfare are quite detailed and scholarly and will be more than some readers wish to explore. The lessons, though, seem to me to be essential in understanding not only the past but in preparing for the future.

These truths may be unpalatable and frightening for those of us who believe that, at heart, all human beings basically think alike and want the same things. I suspect Kaplan's more realistic and more cautionary view of the world is correct, and we should all hear about it.

I was often uncomfortable listening to this, but I recommend it highly for those who want a clear-eyed view of what may be coming in the future!

How to make a fascinating idea boring.

Would you try another book from Robert D. Kaplan and/or Michael Prichard?

Probably.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Revenge of Geography?

The final chapter on mexico was quite interesting.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Michael Prichard?

Not deliberately. The meandering waver between monotone and whine is quite irritating in a book as long as this one.

Did The Revenge of Geography inspire you to do anything?

Yes, it made me eager to find better books on geopolitics.

Geopolitics for the 21st Century

Understanding the whys behind our actions, whether you agree with them or not, is important.

Complete View

Complete view on why Geography helps or hurts any nation in terms of National Defense, and the lessons that history provides.