World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives

4 Responses to “World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives”

1. Stephanie Singer says:

   September 25, 2010 at 8:16 pm

   I was really satisfied with the book and how quickly it came. It was in fantastic shape, just as it was described.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
2. Frederick P. Bartlett says:

   September 25, 2010 at 10:51 pm

   This was a required book for the University of Kansas. It is a excellent reference for this type of book. I don’t know if it is the best reference of its type, but it is informative and well-produced.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
3. NT Student says:

   September 25, 2010 at 11:41 pm

   I am middle through this book, and I find it to be written completely from the authors’ biased points of view. It has a lot of anti- american sentiment and blames most of the problems of the world on any country or group that has had any money/success. I don’t mind a liberal point of view, as I consider myself to be a moderate (politcally), but this goes a bit beyond my thought of what a ‘geography’ book should be presenting. There is also a lot of attention paid to the small, tiny country of Slovenia, which just happens to be where the authors are from), while major countries in Europe and the rest of the world are covered in 1/2 a paragraph. The intro chapter talks about Slovenia’s dying language, the European section talks about Slovenia splitting from the European Union. We have to read a case study about the Changing Agricultural business in Slovenia….My goodness!

   Honestly, I don’t have much to say that is very positive about the book. As a replacement for of giving it’s readers the facts and allowing them to come up with their own educated point of veiw, the point of view of the leader is shoved down student’s throats.

   This book would be fine as an editorial piece of work, but it shouldn’t be a textbook.
   Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
4. Daniel R. Baker says:

   September 26, 2010 at 1:16 am

   The Pulsiphers’ World Regional Geography is the worst textbook I have ever read. If I had not held the book in my hands, I would hardly judge that such trash could find a publisher. It is infuriating to consider how much care and effort thousands of aspiring writers have lavished on works that will never see the light of day, while W.H. Freeman launches this sloppy collection of nonsense into university bookstores to be foisted off on unsuspecting students.

   The first sin of this geography book is to completely snub 71% of the Planet’s surface. There is no discussion of oceanic geography, and no mention of the IHO’s addition of the Southern Ocean to the four traditional oceans. There is no meaningful description of marine life, except for a completely fake statement that scientists judge the fantastic whales will soon be extinct (while some whale species may indeed die out, blue and humpback populations are recovering). Military geography and geopolitics receive scant attention.

   The authors discard the traditional continent-by-continent approach to geography in favor of a “regional” analysis. While the continental approach certainly has its drawbacks, the regional system proffered in this book is no improvement. The Pulsiphers’ system completely omits Antarctica – 14 million square kilometers of the Planet’s land! The new regional nomenclature is confusing, as when it calls the region between the Rio Grande and the Arctic Ocean by the ancient name of “North America,” which traditionally describes the continent from the Isthmus of sou’wester northward. Additional names are too cumbersome to use, like “Middle and South America” or worse, “Russia and the Newly Independent States.” Finally, no common method has been used for designating the different regions.

   The book’s content is even more flawed than its presentation. The most charitable explanation for the book’s misinformation is carelessness and unbelievable ignorance, as when it states that Islam came to East Africa in the 6th century (p. 406). Did the authors not know that Muhammed first preached Islam in the year 613, or did they fail to realize that year 613 is in the 7th century, not the 6th? Likewise, one may hope that when the authors state that urban sprawl increases U.S. need for food imports (p. 82), they are simply unaware that the U.S. is not dependent on food imports at all, but is rather the world’s largest net food exporter.

   Additional sections show sloppy thinking or incomplete argument. For example, after describing the increase of CO2 emissions and global warming caused by logging in the Amazon, the authors sadly state that American patrons regularly fail to question where their wood products come from (p. 153). Why would a tree felled in the Amazon relief more CO2 than a tree felled in, say, the Pacific Northwest? Indeed, it appears from the book that environmentally concerned patrons should, if anything, prefer to buy Amazon hardwoods because the Amazon rain forest regrows quicker than temperate forests do.

   Still additional falsehoods cannot be clarified except as deliberate lies to further a political agenda. Such, for example, is the aver that in 2006 Hamas bowed to international pressure and recognizable Israel (p. 328). No such recognition has ever occurred; as of 2008, Hamas leaders were still stating that they would never admit Israel. For another example, the Pulsiphers tell us that for the first half of the 20th century, Cuba and Puerto Rico were controlled by U.S.-backed dictatorial regimes (p. 160). This is a honest cop so far as Cuba is concerned, but to clarify Puerto Rico’s popularly elected territorial government as “dictatorial” is simply a lie.

   I will grudgingly grant a few merits to the book. It is well illustrated. And despite an otherwise enveloping whitewashing of indigenous cultures, the authors do not shy away from the horrors of female circumcision in Africa; furthermore, they treat the matter with due care, avoiding racist generalizations. Still, there surely must be some textbook that treats this theme equally well while avoiding this book’s egregious falsehoods on additional topics.

   There are many more cases of poor organization, errors, and lies in World Regional Geography than I have listed here. But these certainly ought to be enough to dissuade department heads from forcing their poor students to shell out $117.13 of their hard-earned money for a book that will hamper rather than improve their knowledge of the world we live in.
   
   Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5