In 'Hinterlands,' Hannah Lucinda Smith warns not to overlook conflict at the fringes

Why do some nations develop thriving economies and stable governments while others continually struggle with poverty and instability? According to Tim Marshall in Prisoners of Geography, the answer lies in geography. Marshall argues that a nation’s geography can determine its fate—nations with bountiful natural resources and protective physical features tend to thrive and prosper while other nations struggle by comparison.

In our guide, you’ll learn how rivers, mountains, and people interact to shape a nation’s fortunes. You’ll also learn how geography shapes the way that nations interact with each other. On the international stage, Marshall argues, nations use trade, diplomacy, and military force as they vie for access to geographical bounties—troves of resources, trade routes, and defensive features. As we cover Marshall’s ideas, we’ll consider a variety of perspectives on the role of geography in politics. We’ll also contrast these views with those of historians who argue that other forces, such as economics and culture, have been more influential in shaping history.

In The Silk Roads, historian Peter Frankopan identifies Central and Western Asia as the crossroads of human civilization, the birthplace of the world’s major religions, the battleground where the great empires of history rose and fell, and the garden from which today’s global economy first sprouted. He argues that understanding the East is crucial to our understanding of the world—particularly for Westerners who have lost this global perspective.

In ancient times, trade routes known as the Silk Roads first brought European merchants to the luxury markets of the East, enabling the flow of both material goods and ideas from East to West. According to Frankopan, the Silk Roads have always been history’s crucial connection point, spreading not just luxury goods like silk and spices, but also technology, religion, languages, cultures, ideologies, and even conflicts and diseases. In this guide, we explore Frankopan’s history of the Silk Roads, while also incorporating insights and feedback from other scholars to supplement his analysis.

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson explores the phenomenon of nationalism. His core insight is that the concept of “the nation” has no basis in empirical reality, but is instead a purely political innovation that constructs a shared identity binding strangers from different communities together—usually on the basis of a shared language, history, culture, religion, or ethnicity. Thus, although a nation may consist of tens of millions of people—nearly all of whom will never personally know or even meet one another—nationalism allows each individual to think of themselves as a member of a singular community with a shared identity.

In this guide, we’ve added alternative viewpoints on the basis of nationalism, including psychological and anthropological perspectives. We've also added more historical context for Anderson's theories.

In The Silk Roads, historian Peter Frankopan identifies Central and Western Asia as the crossroads of human civilization, the birthplace of the world’s major religions, the battleground where the great empires of history rose and fell, and the garden from which today’s global economy first sprouted. He argues that understanding the East is crucial to our understanding of the world—particularly for Westerners who have lost this global perspective.

In ancient times, trade routes known as the Silk Roads first brought European merchants to the luxury markets of the East, enabling the flow of both material goods and ideas from East to West. According to Frankopan, the Silk Roads have always been history’s crucial connection point, spreading not just luxury goods like silk and spices, but also technology, religion, languages, cultures, ideologies, and even conflicts and diseases. In this guide, we explore Frankopan’s history of the Silk Roads, while also incorporating insights and feedback from other scholars to supplement his analysis.

Why do some nations develop thriving economies and stable governments while others continually struggle with poverty and instability? According to Tim Marshall in Prisoners of Geography, the answer lies in geography. Marshall argues that a nation’s geography can determine its fate—nations with bountiful natural resources and protective physical features tend to thrive and prosper while other nations struggle by comparison.

In our guide, you’ll learn how rivers, mountains, and people interact to shape a nation’s fortunes. You’ll also learn how geography shapes the way that nations interact with each other. On the international stage, Marshall argues, nations use trade, diplomacy, and military force as they vie for access to geographical bounties—troves of resources, trade routes, and defensive features. As we cover Marshall’s ideas, we’ll consider a variety of perspectives on the role of geography in politics. We’ll also contrast these views with those of historians who argue that other forces, such as economics and culture, have been more influential in shaping history.

According to Gen. H.R. McMaster, the United States views the world through a self-centered lens, assuming that its policy decisions are the main driving force behind global events. Because of this distorted perspective, the US has lost influence on the global stage at a time when authoritarian aggression is on the rise. In Battlegrounds, McMaster, who was US national security adviser in 2017-18, contends that American leaders must learn to see the world through the eyes of the US's adversaries in order to defend against foreign threats and compete in the modern global landscape.

In this guide, we’ll explore McMaster’s criticism of the assumptions driving US foreign policy, his assessment of the threats America faces, and the steps he believes the US must take. We’ll compare McMaster’s views with those of other experts on diplomacy, while placing his assessments in their larger context and updating some of his information based on events since the book’s publication.

Why do some nations develop thriving economies and stable governments while others continually struggle with poverty and instability? According to Tim Marshall in Prisoners of Geography, the answer lies in geography. Marshall argues that a nation’s geography can determine its fate—nations with bountiful natural resources and protective physical features tend to thrive and prosper while other nations struggle by comparison.

In our guide, you’ll learn how rivers, mountains, and people interact to shape a nation’s fortunes. You’ll also learn how geography shapes the way that nations interact with each other. On the international stage, Marshall argues, nations use trade, diplomacy, and military force as they vie for access to geographical bounties—troves of resources, trade routes, and defensive features. As we cover Marshall’s ideas, we’ll consider a variety of perspectives on the role of geography in politics. We’ll also contrast these views with those of historians who argue that other forces, such as economics and culture, have been more influential in shaping history.

These days, the world is moving faster than ever. Every day new scientific discoveries are announced, conflict breaks out somewhere in the world, and nature and the climate behave unexpectedly. If you feel overwhelmed or destabilized by this, you’re not alone—no period in the history of humanity has ever been subject to such quickly changing conditions as today.

In Thank You For Being Late, author, journalist, and columnist Thomas Friedman explains how these conditions arose—the three forces that shape the world, technology, globalization, and climate change, all accelerated at once—and how we can adapt to them.