This up-to-date book provides a firm understanding of the geographic fundamentals behind everyday headlines. It introduces the major tools, techniques, and methodological approaches of the field, and deals honestly and provocatively with current issues. The book emphasizes both scientific and humanistic analytical skills, and demonstrates to readers that many basic principles of geography can be studied and demonstrated locally. The theme of human-environmental interaction is woven throughout the book. Chapter topics include weather and climate, landforms, the hydrosphere and biosphere; population, population increase, and migration; cultural geography; the geography of languages and religions; the human food supply; the earth's resources and environmental protection; cites and urbanization; a world of states; national paths to economic growth; and the globalization of economics and politics. For anyone who want to examine how the physical environment sets the stage upon which humans act out their lives.
Edward F. Bergman was born in Wisconsin and studied at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), the University of Vienna (Austria), and the University of Washington in Seattle. Today he teaches at Lehman College of the City University of New York and widely across Europe. When not lecturing or writing, he enjoys Manhattan's cultural and social life, although, he warns, nobody should come to his house for dinner expecting great food.
William H. Renwick earned a B.A. from Rhode Island College in 1973 and a Ph.D. in geography from Clark University in 1979. He has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Rutgers University, and is currently Associate Professor of Geography at Miami University. A physical geographer with interests in geomorphology and environmental issues, his research focuses on impacts of land-use change on rivers and lakes, particularly in agricultural landscapes in the Midwest. When time permits, he studies these environments from the seat of a wooden canoe.