Unemployed! In Greenland!

The other day, a couple of guidance counselors came down to my classroom and explained the ins and outs of applying to college. Once they were through with their very thorough presentation, I said to my students:

"You could go to college . . . or you could read this book. It explains EVERYTHING about the world. And it's a lot cheaper."

I held up Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World.

The book is rather deterministic in its thesis: you can't escape the rivers, mountains, flatlands, harbors, oceans, and jungles in your country. And they will determine how you interact with your neighbors and how you will interact within your own country. You may have great natural resources, but no rivers and easily built roadways with which to interconnect your cities and towns-- which is much of South America. You may be at the mercy of the flatlands to your east, which is why Russia is always mucking about in the Ukraine. You might be-- like South Korea-- constantly worried not only about the threat of war, but also about a massive flood of refugees. In Africa, rivers don't go very far before they plummet downward in waterfalls. In the Middle East, borders were drawn up after World War I and don't correspond with geography (not to mention the Sykes-Picot agreement).

In America, our rivers are navigable and they lead to safe harbors. We also don't have ot worry about out neighbors (unless you're Donald Trump). Canada doesn't have enough people and there is too much desert between us and Mexico for that border to be a military threat.

And as the ice melts, there will eventually be employment in Greenland.

While Marshall's unabashed realpolitik might annoy some advocates of free will, I didn't mind it.

The best thing about the book is it contains lots of maps. I love looking at maps, and I don't have a very good visual memory. I can look at a map, and then two paragraphs later, I'll have to turn back a page and look at it again. Where is Sweden? Oh there it is. Got it. Wait? Where is it?