Earth Shapers

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A captivating and compelling account of how civilisations have made use of natural landscapes for their long-term benefit. From the astounding Incan road system to the building of Chicago and the Panama canal, humans have a long history of shaping the Earth to build connections between ourselves. Samson demonstrates how we are not always prisoners of geography, but increasingly its masters -- Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of ORIGINS: How the Earth Shaped Human History Samson takes a fresh look at humanity's imprint on the planet ... A riposte to the idea that geography is destiny by charting the ways humans have reshaped their surroundings -- Pilita Clark * Financial Times * From railroads colonisers dreamed of building turning in projects designed by Africans, through to what travel routes will be used again when there is no longer a border within Korea, Earth Shapers tells stories that have been ignored because they do not fit the old narrative; a book that reshapes our story of global human geography -- Danny Dorling, 1971 Professor of Geography, University of Oxford Accessible and erudite, Earth Shapers makes for a refreshing perspective on the relationship between human and physical geography. Ranging confidently from Chicago to Mozambique to Korea just as it travels across the history of technology, cities, nationalism, colonialism and liberation ... it is an original look at the geography of connection in an age where so much attention is given to the geography of division, to walls and borders -- Lewis Baston, author of Borderlines This bold and rich collection ranges widely across five continents and an array of fascinating case studies, casting light on various meanings of geographical connectivity. Reading this book it's impossible not to learn something new -- Dr Sara Caputo, author of Tracks on the Ocean and Director of Studies in History and Senior Research Fellow, University of Cambridge Modern geography is the geography of our personal, political and sociological souls. We urgently need to know what we are. Samson holds up a mirror, showing us ourselves reflected in what we've done. Fascinating, original and prescient -- Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild Well researched and wide-ranging, this book joins the dots, showing the power of connections between places -- Cliff Hague OBE, Emeritus Professor of Planning and Spatial Development at Heriot-Watt University Humans are inveterate environmental meddlers. No guide to their excesses is more eloquent, more learned, more surprising, more amusing or more convincing than Maxim Samson. His lively language and minatory message are as entertaining as they are unsettling -- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, William P. Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame Praise for INVISIBLE LINES * : * An illuminating glimpse of the chain reactions of human and physical geography ... Invisible Lines shows the unexpected side-effects of human-drawn borders * Financial Times * Fascinating...a truly original adventure into new ways of exploring a sense of place -- Simon Jenkins A chance to see the world anew through the eyes of a wonderfully curious new writer * Observer * Endlessly interesting * Spectator * Old worlds enhanced, new worlds exposed and challenged ... a wise and thought-provoking series of raids across borders we thought we knew and others made visible to us, by Maxim Samson's forensic eye -- Iain Sinclair Invisible Lines is a fascinating, detailed exploration of the hidden boundaries that carve up the world ... it is a pleasure to accompany Samson to the Malaria Belt, inside eruvim (markers of a single domestic space within which fewer Sabbath regulations apply), or along the border of Portugal to discover why vultures prefer not to cross it * Telegraph * Utterly engrossing! Samson's literary atlas of the world's unseen boundaries and how they've shaped our lives demands to be read -- Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History A fascinating exploration of the lesser-known and more subtle borders across the earth and the surprising ways in which they shape our lives * i news *