Walls: The Long History of Human Barriers and Why We Build Them

Building walls that separate us from others is as old as humanity.

People have built walls to keep others out for thousands of years, from the Great Wall of China to Hadrian's Wall to security fences along the US-Mexico border. But did you know they've also been built to keep people in, to grow food, to control nature and to collect taxes? Sometimes they've helped people and kept communities safe, but they've also created inequity and done more harm than good. Why do we have walls at all?

Walls: the Long History of Human Barriers and Why We Build Them explores the many reasons humanity has put up walls over the course of our history, and why we continue building them today.

The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Gregor Craigie is a radio journalist and writer. He has worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for many years. Before that he worked in several cities, including London, England, where he was an announcer for the BBC World Service and a reporter for CBS Radio. Gregor’s first book for adults, On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy and the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. His first book for children was Why Humans Build Up: The Rise of Temples, Towers and Skyscrapers, part of the Orca Timeline series. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Arden Taylor is a Toronto-based freelance illustrator. A graduate of Sheridan College with an honors bachelor of illustration, she enjoys digitally creating colorful illustrations of architecture and people and designs for wallpaper and other projects. Her clients include Hazlitt magazine and California Institute of Technology, and her work has been featured in various magazines, newspapers, advertising campaigns and websites. She is the illustrator of Walls, The True Story of Vanilla and Why Communities Need Engineers.