Geography

History and Concepts

This comprehensive and accessible guide to the full breadth of Geography from an Anglophone perspective—from its beginnings to contemporary debates and from its biophysical to its cultural scholarship—is a must-read for geography undergraduates, but also for academics and interested laypeople encountering contemporary geography, excited by what’s going on, and keen to dig deeper.

This book should become a core text for all students getting to grips with either the history of geography or new ideas and theories in contemporary human geography. It is clear, comprehensive and intellectually stimulating.

Arild Holt-Jensen's 5th edition of his significantly re-written and refreshed Geography: History and Concepts is a major achievement as an accessible yet inspiring textbook. It pulls together in an intelligent way different strands of scientific theory, concepts and applications into applied research across geography over the millennia, centuries and decades up until to now. This is most useful to students on courses covering the history, philosophy and overall methodologies in geography at both undergraduate and also conversion Masters courses in geography (including for those moving from physical geography to human geography). This resource for students is necessary within the now much familiar fragmentation and (necessary) specialisation which researchers and much more advanced students are used to, as they at times now realise (again) that they - and our world around us -  misses geographers (and those from other social and physical disciplines) of different specialisms addressing grand societal and environmental challenges together.

The new edition of the volume is a very thoughtful and balanced book about the beauty of geography as an academic discipline. Holt-Jensen, as an old school geographer, explains in a very clever and intriguing way what geography is, what it can provide and finally how to think geographically, always referring to the roots of the discipline. If you’re looking to understand what geography is and what it has to offer, you’ll find the answers in here. Definitely a book that belongs in every student’s bookshelf and on every teacher’s desk.

The appearance of a fifth edition of Holt-Jensen’s book reconfirms its status within the anglophone strand of this texture, adding a Norwegian flavour and more mindful of the French and German threads than most other English language textbooks on geographical thought.

The book makes its case filled with a contagious excitement for the geographical profession. Additional to offering this fascinating geographical vista, the book does not let readers down in doing what it says on the tin: offering a thorough introduction to the history and philosophy of geography on the undergraduate level.