Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World

(Hardback, Main)

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Description

Our world has innumerable boundaries, ranging from the obvious - like an ocean - to subtle differences in language or climate. Most of us cross invisible lines all the time, but don't stop to consider them.

In Invisible Lines, geographer Maxim Samson presents 30 such unseen boundaries, intriguing and unexpected examples of the myriad ways in which we collectively engage with and experience the world. From football hooligans in Buenos Aires to air quality in China, Paris' banlieues to sub-Saharan Africa's Malaria Belt, the existence - or perceived existence - of dividing lines has manifold implications for people, wildlife, and places.

Fully illustrated with maps of each location, Invisible Lines reveals the extraordinary ways in which we try to render the planet more liveable and legible; a compelling guide to seeing and understanding our world in all its consistency - and all its messiness, too.

Reviews

'Old worlds enhanced, new worlds exposed and challenged ... a wise and thought-provoking series of raids across borders we thought we knew and others made visible to us, by Maxim Samson's forensic eye, for the first time' - Iain Sinclair, author of The Gold Machine and The Last London

'Utterly engrossing! Samson's literary atlas of the world's unseen boundaries and how they've shaped our lives demands to be read' - Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History

'A fascinating book ... a truly original adventure into new ways of exploring what we mean by a sense of place' - Simon Jenkins, author of The Celts and A Short History of England

'The world is a mesh of lines. We don't normally see them, and so we blunder on, unaware of where we really are and missing out on so much. Samson's iconoclastic new geography will make the scales fall from your eyes. A tremendous and important read' - Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild

'A journey to the unmarked and unseen borders that shape our world ... a fascinating, extraordinary and insightful exploration of the many boundaries that define us' - Alastair Bonnett, author of The Age of Islands and Off the Map

Author Bio

Maxim Samson is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, specialising in geographies of religion, globalisation, multiculturalism and urbanisation. In his spare time, Maxim enjoys long-distance running, plant-based cooking, home-brewing, reading maps, maintaining his 2,700+ day Duolingo streak and gradually adding to his kaleidoscopic flag collection. Invisible Lines is his first book.