A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps

The book 47 BORDERS explores the history of the world through its borders, revealing how political identities are shaped, why the world looks the way it does, and the scale of human folly. It is a fascinating, witty, and surprising look at the history of the world, told through its borders.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 25 April 2024
Publisher: Headline Publishing Group

Fascinating TOM HOLLAND | A delight from start to finish

MIRANDA SAWYER

By turns surprising, funny, bleak, ridiculous, or all four of those at once

GIDEON DEFOE

People 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.

More praise for 47 BORDERS:

Fascinating and hugely entertaining

MARINA HYDE

You'll never look at a map the same way again

STEPHEN BUSH

[A] clever, confounding history

PATRICK MAGUIRE

A witty grand tour

DORIAN LYNSKEY

Warm, funny and sharply political

PHIL TINLINE

Weight: 576g
Dimension: 164 x 242 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781472298508