This is the first intellectual history of a subject that over the last five centuries has played a significant role in the development of Western civilization. The author describes the activities of the explorers and map-makers of Renaissance and early modern Europe; the role of geography during the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the Darwinian Revolution; and the interactions between geography and empire building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout the book the development of geographical thought and practice is portrayed against the broader social and intellectual context of the times. Since 1945 activity in the subject has been intense: David Livingstone provides a criti… More >>
The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise
My graduate class raced through this text. It was dry, but informative. Certainly not the book you should read for pleasure. By itself it would not have helped me grasp the history of geography, as its title suggests. It was only with the context provided by the prof that things started to gel.
Rating: 3 / 5