Introduction 1 About This Book 2 Foolish Assumptions 2 Icons Used in This Book 3 Beyond the Book 4 Where to Go from Here 4 Part 1: Getting Grounded: The Geographic Basics 5 Chapter 1: Geography: The Why of Where and Why You Should Care 7 Geography: Making Sense of it All 8 From ancient roots 8 To modern discipline 9 Exposing Misconceptions: More Than Maps and Trivia 11 The Geographic Advantage 11 What is the capital city of Indonesia? 12 Why is Jakarta the capital of Indonesia? 12 Getting to the Essentials 13 Where things are in the world: The world in spatial terms 14 What locations are like: Places and regions 15 Why things are the way they are: Physical systems 16 Giving that human touch: Human systems 16 Interacting with the world around us: Environment and society 17 Putting geography to use: Uses of geography 18 Chapter 2: Thinking Like a Geographer 19 Changing the Way You Think -- Geographically 20 Case Study #1: Where Something is Located 21 A fraction of its former self 22 Where lions hang out 23 What gives with grasslands? 23 Extinction made easy 24 Fewer lions? So what? 25 Summing up 26 Case Study #2: Where Something Should be Located 26 Summing up 27 Looking ahead 28 Chapter 3: Lining Up Locations 29 Welcome to Gridville 29 Feeling Kind of Square 30 Telling Someone Where to Go 31 Relative location 31 Absolute location 32 The best location to use 32 The Global Grid: Hip, Hip, Hipparchus! 32 Avoiding gridlock 33 The naming game 34 Getting Lined Up 36 Latitude 36 Longitude 38 Graticule 39 Minutes and seconds that don''t tick away 40 Chapter 4: Truthiness in Mapping 41 Seeing the Light: Map Projections 42 Realizing Exactly How Flat Maps Lie 44 Singapore, please And step on it! 45 Wading through lies in search of the truth 47 Isn''t there a truthful map anywhere? 48 The one and only honest map: The globe! 49 Honesty is the best policy, except 49 Telling the truth, but telling it skewed 50 Different Strokes for Different Folks: A World of Projections 51 All in the (map) family 52 Five noteworthy liars 53 Mapping a Cartographic Controversy! 57 Chapter 5: Telling a Spatial Story 59 Why We Need Tal(l) Dogs 60 Taking It to Scale 61 Going the distance 61 Comparing Earth at different scales 62 Showing the Ups and Downs: Topography 65 Spot heights 65 Contour lines 66 Shading or Color 66 Using Symbols to Tell the Story 67 Point symbols 68 Line symbols 68 Area symbols 70 New Ways of Seeing: How Technology has Changed How we Make and Use Maps 72 Geographic Information Systems 72 Global Positioning Systems 74 Remote sensing 75 Making Maps Yourself! 77 Part 2: Let''s Get Physical: Land, Water, and Air 79 Chapter 6: Shape-shifting Earth 81 Starting at the Bottom: Inside Earth 82 Moving Continents: Big Pieces of a Big Puzzle 84 Where have you gone, Gondwanaland? 85 Alfred Wegener, mover and shaker 85 Puzzle solved! 86 Getting Down to Theory 86 Making Mountains Out of Molehills 88 Folding the crust 88 Whose "fault" is it? 90 Plate tectonics: A four-letter word! 91 Experiencing Earthquakes: Shake, Rattle and Roll! 92 Splitsville in California 92 People at risk 93 How earthquakes kill and maim 94 A matter of magnitude 96 Subducting Plates: Volcano Makers 98 "The Ring of Fire" 98 Subduction: Another four-letter word? 99 Categorizing Tectonic Processes 102 Chapter 7: A Nip and a Tuck: Giving Earth a Facelift 103 Getting Carried Away 104 Weathering Earth 105 Wasting away 108 Changing the Landscape 109 Staying grounded: Gravity transfer 109 Going with the flow: Water 110 The chill factor: Glaciers 115 Making a deposit: Wind 117 Chapter 8: Making a Splash on Earth 119 Taking the Plunge: Global Water Supply 120 Those ice caps are really cool! 121 Getting out: Oceans, seas, gulfs, and bays 122 Coming inland: Lakes 123 Shaping Our World: Oceans 124 Going where the action is: The continental shelves 124 Claiming ocean ownership 126 Getting a rise out of oceans 128 Getting Fresh with Water 129 The stages of the water cycle 131 Run-off: Going with the flow 132 Infiltration: Out of sight, not out of mind 132 Good to the very last drop 134 Chapter 9: Warming Up and Chilling Out: Why Climates Happen 137 Getting a Grip on Climate 138 Playing the Angles 139 Making hot and cold 139 Making rain and snow 140 Tilt-a-World: The Reasons for the Seasons 141 Special lines of latitude 141 Defining the seasons 142 Special lines of latitude revisited 144 Hot or Cold? Adjust Your Altitude 145 Warming the atmosphere 145 Weighty matter 145 Seeing (and feeling) is believing 145 The lapse rate 146 Windward slope, leeward slope 147 Gaining Heat, Losing Heat 148 Afternoon versus evening 148 Summer versus winter 149 Oh, How the Wind Blows 150 Going with the Flow: Ocean Currents 150 Warm currents, cold currents 151 Going against the norm: El Niño and La Niña 152 Living Under Pressure 154 Pressure belts 155 Monsoons 155 Chapter 10: Connecting Climates and Vegetation 159 Giving Class to Climates 160 Mixing Sun and Rain: Humid Tropical Climates 162 Tropical rainforest 163 Tropical monsoon 165 Savanna (tropical wet and dry) 165 Going to Extremes: Dry Climates 167 Desert 168 Semi-desert (steppe) 169 Enjoying the In-between: Humid Mesothermal Climates 172 Humid subtropical 172 Mediterranean 172 Marine west coast 173 Cooling Off: Humid Microthermal Climates 174 Humid continental 175 Subarctic 175 Dropping Below Freezing: Polar Climates 176 Tundra 176 Ice cap 178 Part 3: Peopling the Planet 179 Chapter 11: Nobody Here But A Few Billion Friends 181 Going by the Numbers 182 Opportunity for livelihood 183 Urban growth 185 Going Ballistic: Population Growth 185 Checking Behind the Curve: Population Change 187 Dealing with births and deaths: Natural increase 187 Increasing for a reason: The demographic transition model 189 Making connections 193 Considering "Overpopulation" 196 Neo-Malthusians 197 Cornucopians 199 Chapter 12: Shift Happens: Migration 203 Populating the Planet 204 Bridging the oceans 204 Voyaging afar 205 Making colonial connections 206 Forcing involuntary migration 207 Choosing to Migrate 207 Coming to America 208 Migrating at home 210 Relocating within America 211 Giving a Good Impression 214 Playing the mental game 214 Getting an image adjustment 216 Putting your best image forward 216 Chapter 13: Culture: The Way We Live 219 Being Different Thousands of Times Over 220 Counting cultural diversity 221 Isolating people 222 Adapting to new surroundings 222 Spreading the Word on Culture 223 Relocating one''s culture 224 Coming down with culture 224 Doing what the big boys do 226 Calling a Halt: Barrier Effects 226 Getting physical 227 Socializing effects 229 Getting Religion: How It Moves and Grows 230 Putting diffusion to work 231 Getting effects into action 232 Creating local character 232 Getting in a Word about Language 234 Diffusing languages 235 Checking the physical effects 236 Playing the landscape naming game 236 Creating a Single Global Culture 237 Promoting cultural divergence 238 Promoting cultural convergence 238 Chapter 14: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 239 Drawing and Re-Drawing the Boundaries of the World 240 Typecasting Boundary Lines 241 Ethnic boundaries 242 Natural (physical) boundaries 243 Geometric boundaries 244 Living with the Consequences 245 Ethnic intrigues 245 Positional disputes 248 Functional disputes 250 Resource disputes 251 Land-locked states 252 Questions of size and shape 254 Drawing Electoral District Boundaries 256 Gerrymandering: Rigging the outcome 257 Meeting the letter and spirit of the law 259 Part 4: Putting the Planet to Use 261 Chapter 15: Takin'' Care of Business 263 Categorizing Economic Activity 264 Primary activities 264 Secondary activities 265 Tertiary activities 265 Quaternary activities 266 Activity distribution around the world 266 Putting Economic Systems into Place 267 Subsistence economies 267 Commercial economies 268 Understanding Location Factors 269 Proximity to raw material(s) 272 Proximity to market(s) 272.