Earth Shapers

For many of us, geography has an inexorable quality. Brimming with real and imaginary objects like mountains, oceans, and borders, our world seems quite literally set in stone. But over time, we have become experts at reshaping our surroundings, both through ingenuity and brute force. From the Qhapaq Nan, South America''s ''Great Road'', to the Panama Canal; from Mozambique''s railways to Korea''s sacred Baekdu-daegan mountain range, Samson explores how humans have etched our needs onto the natural landscape, and in doing so, changed the very course of history. A sweeping work that touches on ecology, sociology, history and politics, Earth Shapers argues that, far from being prisoners to the inevitability of geography, we are instead fundamental and intrinsic to it.

Préface
How humans harnessed the geographical landscape and wrote ourselves onto our surroundings

Auteur
Maxim Samson is a geographer and the author of Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World. An award-winning educator and researcher, he has taught and presented keynote lectures at universities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Indonesia. In addition to working as an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago, he serves as Immediate Past Chair of the American Association of Geographers' Religions and Belief Systems research specialty group and associate editor of the Journal of Jewish Education. In his free time, he enjoys long-distance running and exploring the culture and language of his favourite country, Indonesia.