Don't Know Much About Geography

by Kenneth C. Davis

Hardcover, 1992

Status

Available

Call number

910.76

Publication

New York : W. Morrow, c1992.

Description

From bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes a treasure trove of answers to questions about our world. Was there an Atlantis? What's the smallest country in the world? What's the difference between a jungle and a rain forest? Kenneth C. Davis, author ofDon't Know Much About(r) History, Don't Know Much About(r) the Civil WarandDon't Know Much About(r) the Bible,turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics. In this lively, entertaining, and endlessly fascinating presentation, you'll hear about the personalities that helped shape the world and learn the answers to questions that have vexed most of us since grade school. Along the way, Davis offers an affectionate ode to the earth: a celebration of the earth, a searching investigation of the destruction of our habitat, and a practical guide to saving our home planet. For anyone who has felt geographically ignorant ever since gas stations stopped handing out free maps,Don't Know Much About(r) Geographyis enormously informative entertainment.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member ksmyth

This is such a fun book. It isn't dry as the title might imply, and is, in my view, the best of Kenneth C. Davis's books

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LibraryThing member Babbler

A wonderful and easy to understand overview of geography.

LibraryThing member ChiaraBeth

I'll be honest with you...I haven't finished this one yet. I just kept falling asleep whenever I tucked myself into bed to read! But that's my only complaint about the book: it's not good bedtime reading unless you suffer from insomnia. The content is great and simply, yet engagingly, explained.

What's fun about geography is that it's so tied up with history that you can't help but learning more than one subject at once. Davis also throws in the occasional amusing personal anecdote, so that it doesn't feel like your old high-school textbook that, if it tried to engage you, it did so with only-a-geologist-could-have-written-it puns on the Earth's "crust", etc. I just hope I find time to finish this at some point during the day!

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LibraryThing member melydia

This was just the book I was looking for. Geography is a science not just of place names and boundaries, but of politics and culture and environment and history. I learned tons about exploration and wars and colonization and weather and climate and more, all in bite-sized chunks that somehow

managed to be very accessible without talking down to the reader. I never felt embarrassed by my lack of knowledge, and it opened my eyes to a number of subjects I never knew could be interesting. Definitely recommended as a solid introduction.

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LibraryThing member skinglist

Well that start date is kind of untrue. When I got this from the library I realized it was at 20% already and via LT I realized I'd started and abandoned this in 2015. I nearly did the same in 2016.

While either the e-book format and/or his update have addressed the factual errors mentioned in

previous reviews, his updating of this book is random. In one breath he's talking about the fall of Yugoslavia as if it was yesterday and the Euro is a thing of the future. In another, he's talking about the fall of Mubarak and Arab Spring. While the book has good framework, it lacks a good organizational structure and/or cohesive narrative.

That said, some fun factoids and myth debunking: seven seas, four oceans, some of the ancient seven wonders and an interesting read. I enjoyed his snippets on the history behind mythical and biblical places and ongoing geographical questions such as whether Cleopatra was white.

"Of course, the ancients were not the only ones with strange ideas about geography" Oh so he met Sarah Palin in the course of his research.

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LibraryThing member LaPhenix

Rather tedious at times and much heavier on the history than I expected.

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