A History of the World in 47 Borders — Jonn Elledge

Fascinating TOM HOLLAND A delight from start to finish MIRANDA SAWYER A novel and fascinating perspective on world history BILL BRYSON By turns surprising funny bleak ridiculous or all four of those at once GIDEON DEFOEPeople have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on Sometimes rooted in physical geography sometimes entirely arbitrary these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way By telling the stories of these borders we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped why the world looks the way it does and about the scale of human folly From the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilisation to the secret British French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War to the reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy this is a fascinating witty and surprising look at the history of the world told through its borders Tanıtım Bülteninden