Product Description

This extensively revised second edition draws together an interdisciplinary collection of the most important political, geographical, historical and sociological readings of geopolitics in the early twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72171 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 306 pages

From the Author
Design and Audience
This book is an edited collection of articles and famous texts relating to the history of geopolitics in the twentieth century. It is aimed at an introductory to senior level undergraduate audience but can be profitably used in grad classes as an introduction to Critical Geopolitics. The book is divided into five sections: Imperialist, Cold War and New World Order Geopolitics (edited by myself), Environmental Geopolitics (by Simon Dalby) and Anti-Geopolitics (dealing with social movements edited by Paul Routledge). The book is illustrated with humorous political cartoons designed to amuse while educating. The text is suitable for Intro to World Politics and Twentieth Century politics classes.

From the Back Cover

This extensively revised second edition of The Geopolitics Reader draws together the most important political, geographical, historical and sociological readings of geopolitics in the early twenty first century.

The Reader draws on the most illuminating examples of imperial, Cold War, contemporary geopolitics, new environmental themes, global dangers and multiple resistances to the practices of geopolitics. The editors provide comprehensive introductions and critical comment at the beginning of each of the five parts and political cartoons are integrated throughout. Whilst this compendium of divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change has retained its five part structure, the selection of readings have been updated to account for recent developments in the critical study of geopolitics and the post 9/11 geopolitical landscape.

Including readings by Theodore Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and Harry Truman, this invaluable collection of readings introduces fresh perspectives on discourse, power, gender, knowledge and the political economy.

Customer Reviews

Useful but super Left-Wing
I purchased this book to use in the preparation of an undergraduate lecture. It is extremely useful in providing the significant source texts for much of the study of geopolitics. The first three sections of the book "Imperialist Geopolitics", "Cold War Geopolitics" and "New World Order Geopolitics" are particularly good.

But what I absolutely do not like are the section introductions by the authors, particularly those by O'Tuathail. These are bitterly left-wing and anti-American, well-nigh extremist. As a small example, the first Gulf War, according to the editor, was "a war fought to guarantee Western access to cheap petroleum and to restore an anti-democratic but pro-Western monarchy." Such a simplistic explanation (which might lead one to assume that the unprovoked invasion of the murderous dictator Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it, and which also ignores the fact that it was neighbouring Arab states who led the call for the counter-invasion) is not worthy in a text book.

In short, this is a useful book in terms of its source content, but its editorial is quite shocking in places. Great to refer to for document extracts, but I'd never give it to an undergraduate class.