A Hundred Years of Geography
Description
Far from dissolving, this effort demonstates the ongoing vitality of geography as a profession. In a world increasingly sensitive to the problems of people and resources, geography has constantly provided the basic information for its sister sciences, economics, political science, sociology and demography, This book turns, attention to geography itself, in an incisive survey of the development of the discipline as a science.
A Hundred Years of Geography draws together the threads of a century of progress, from the first scientific explorations and mappings to present-day trends toward specialization and generalization. It contains a synoptic view of the development of the various aspects of geography, showing how the field has been differentiated from associated disciplines and how it has differentiated and specialized within itself.
The book also offers two important reference tools: a bibliography of the important geographical works published throughout the world, and biographical sketches of ninety important geographers. It is informative, stimulating, urbane and civilized reading, as well as being an excellent introductory text and reference work to recent scholarship in the field of geography.
Editorial Reviews
“[A] straightforward account of geographic history during the last century…. The book is informative and well written. The author is obviously enthusiastic about his subject and knows it well…. Professor Freeman produces an uncomplicated, forthright statement of the subject and provides a book that geographers and non-geographers alike should find a handy reference to the recent history of the subject.”
—Sheldon Judson, American Scientist
“[T]his book is intended to be an introductory text and a reference book. It fulfills both aims…. As a text, it provides a coherent and well-written survey of a broad field, by an experience geographer, although its value might have been enhanced by a clearer statement of the purpose of modern geography as it is revealed in recent methodological writings. As a reference book, it provides a straightforward account of the growth of geography in Britain and its relationship with contemporary thought in Europe and America…. [Freeman] has a broad command of the literature, and his book deserves to be widely read.”
—Ronald H. Buchanan, Science
“Mr. Freeman has gathered up an impressive heap of data with energy and success, and has pushed the handling of the subject much beyond the biographical hop, skip and jump which often seems to characterize first efforts of this kind…. Mr. Freeman has completed single-handed what might well in its bulk and range suggest another compilation, and the book has in parts a strength of coherence and conviction which rarely appears in compilations. Many readers will realize frankly just how much they did not know about the history of geography.”
—Harrier Steers, The Geographical Journal