World politics is also geopolitics. All governments, all heads of state are subject to the constraints of geography. Mountains and plains, rivers, seas, deserts set limits to their scope for decision-making. To understand history and politics, of course, one must know the people, the ideas, the attitudes. But if you don't include geography, you don't get a complete picture. Take Russia, for example: from the Great Princes of Moscow to Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin, and Vladimir Putin, every Russian leader has faced the same geostrategic problems, whether under tsarism, communism, or capitalist nepotism. Most ports still freeze for half a year. Not good for the navy. The northern European lowlands from the North Sea to the Urals are still flat. Anyone can march through.

Russia, China, the U.S., Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, Japan and Korea, the Arctic and Greenland: In ten chapters, Tim Marshall shows how geography influences and has influenced world politics.