Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Vladimir Putin says he is a religious man. Tim Marshall imagines him at his prayers each night, asking God one question: why didn’t you put some mountains in Ukraine? Because there are none, the North European Plain runs flat from France to the Urals, and armies have come across it repeatedly — the Poles in 1605, the Swedes in 1708, Napoleon in 1812, the Germans in 1914 and 1941. Count the Crimean War too and, between 1812 and 1945, the Russians fought on or around that plain roughly once every thirty-three years. The landscape imprisons leaders, handing them fewer choices than the headlines suggest.

Tim Marshall on SummaryShelf

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World