Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Over the last fifteen years or so, borders have never been out of the news," observe Papin, head of Le Monde's infographics and cartography department, and Tertrais (War Without End), deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, in their introduction to this sobering atlas. Noting that "most often, borders are drawn in blood" with only around 50 countries "created by peaceful secession," the creatorss focus on highly contentious borders, from Kashmir's "jigsaw of disputes" to numerous maps related to Israel, Gaza, and the Occupied West Bank. The volume does offer some more lighthearted cartographic curios (the world's most elevated border is on Mt. Everest, between China and Nepal; for centuries, it was standard to mark a maritime border at "the maximum distance that a cannonball could be fired from the coast") and spotlights less fraught geopolitical redefinitions (e.g., the evolution of Europe's Schengen area). Still, it's best at providing a unique view of current flash points and crises, from Covid and Brexit to Ukraine and Taiwan. One fascinating map spotlights the enormous increase in border walls and fences after the Cold War, from "around fifteen" in the postwar period to "more than seventy" today. This offers fine-grained cartographic context to contemporary conflicts. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Information by cartographer and Le Monde journalist Papin and geopolitical and international-relations expert Tertrais (deputy dir., Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique) here teams with 70 maps and infographics by Laborde (a designer at Le Monde) to create a book that explores the world through the concept of borders. Each chapter (with titles like "History of Borders" and "Disputed Borders") begins with several text-focused pages, leading into map and infographic-rich shorter sections ("The Curtains of the Cold War"; "The West Bank"). As the authors note, rising sea levels will likely mean continued focus on border questions in coming decades. VERDICT Maps, infographics, and informative text combine for a useful library addition.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
This land is (not) your land. "God created war so that Americans would learn geography." Mark Twain's sardonic observation comes to mind when reading this captivating and wide-ranging collection of maps that highlight conflicts and disputes around the world. "Most often, borders are drawn in blood," write the authors. "Even if we don't take decolonization into account, more than a hundred states have established their borders through war." Papin and Laborde are cartographers at the French dailyLe Monde, and Tertrais is deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank on international security issues. Beyond their many visually arresting maps, the authors also include insightful aperçus--the book is French, after all--that don't usually make it into an atlas. The authors quote, for instance, the late legal scholar François Terré: "All borders are artificial, in the sense that they are defined by men and are therefore arbitrary: they are scars left by history." Among those scars are numerous hot zones. Individual pages are devoted to Kashmir, the Mideast, and the South China Sea. A few maps explore the evolution of Ukraine, Russia's invasion of that country, and Russia's sphere of influence; as with all the images in the book, these maps are sharply designed in muted colors and accompanied by useful text. There's much that will be new to readers: The Germany-Denmark border was established by a public referendum in 1920; a third of the world's recent pirate attacks have occurred in the Gulf of Guinea; and tiny Märket, in the Baltic Sea, is the smallest island in the world divided by two countries (Sweden and Finland). Other maps document more familiar subjects. Addressing a global "proliferation of walls, barriers and fences"--notably, the world's most traveled border, that between the U.S. and Mexico--the authors glean wisdom from philosopher Thierry Paquot: "A wall expresses a lack of understanding, separation, segregation….The builder of walls is a polluter of humanity." Exquisitely rendered maps of troubled territories, buttressed by a philosophical framework. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
