Why Geography Matters More Than Ever

An in-depth look at the geopolitics and geo-economics of the world. The author goes around the globe and explains each country’s situation, historically, geographically, politically, and economically.

What’s interesting is that a lot of the book is not actually about geography, but that’s the author’s point: geography can’t be taken in isolation. It’s the interplay of geography against a million other factors that matter.

An interesting takeaway is the declining world population. As more and more women get educated in the Third World and birth control becomes more prevalent, populations are declining. For some countries, this is a good thing (India is less than half the size of the US yet has 4x the people), but for others, it’s a huge problem (Japan’s population is getting older and older with virtually no immigration to make up for a smaller upcoming generation).

The book gets tedious in places, but was interesting overall. It’s a solid overhead view of the current state of the world.