The Future of Geography by Tim Marshall
Space: the final frontier. These are the pages of The Future of Geography, by Tim Marshall. Its 320-page mission: to explore not only our world but the strange new worlds that we, as a species attempt to seek out and exploit. To seek out new life and new civilizations (if any exist). To boldly go where no book has gone before!
In The Future of Geography, the latest and fascinating book by foreign affairs expert and author, Tim Marshall sets the scene for mankind’s futuristic ventures into geopolitical space ventures and our exploitation of not just the world around, us but also the final frontier, space.
The Space Age has existed throughout the majority of our recent history, being a predominant factor in our world since the 1950s, but Marshall takes us back to its earliest roots in the early twentieth century and its development through the Nazi missile program during World War Two under such auspices of Werner Von Braun, who became instrumental in the development of NASAs own space program, which ultimately led to the landing on the moon in 1969.
The Future of Geography, however, doesn’t just explore the future of space exploration but explores our earliest expeditions and the growing competition between the USA and USSR who based their own expeditions on the pioneering engineer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose equations helped the USSR dominate space throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
However, author Tim Marshall, does not stop there, and highlighting the now three dominant nations in a modern ‘Space Race’ (China, Russia and the USA) we explore the modern pioneers of not just these nations, but also the growing private enterprises of space exploration led by Richard Branson and Elon Musk and the developing countries eager to take their place in this new frontier. What we see in The Future of Geography is that our world geography is certainly expanding beyond the realms of our tiny planet.
The Future of Geography breathes a fresh and invigorating life into a subject that remains constant in the eye of many people, and Tim Marshall certainly provides an easily accessible and entertaining narrative that not only gives the reader a glimpse into this sphere which has dominated over the past half-century but also a glimpse into humanity’s place in the Final Frontier.
- The Future of Geography by Tim Marshall is out now, published by Elliott & Thompson (£20.00). To order a copy go to eandtbooks.com
