Table of Contents

Setting a Scene; Acquiring the Globe; Vikings & Mongols; A Eurocentric Era, 1492-1942; Cold War Origins; Emergent Influences; The Muscovite Heartland; The Soviet Experiment; Peripheral Wars; The Iron Curtain; Intercontinental Deterrence; The Highest Frontier; The Strategic Revolution; The Age of Ecology; Critical Regions; Survival Geography; Index.

About the Author

Neville Brown has authored twenty books or major reports, including The Future of Air Power (1986). With the award-winning Future Global Challenge (1977) he began to give economic, social and ecological factors salience in the quest for a peaceable world. This thrust continued with New Strategy Through Space (1990) through to Global Instability and Strategic Crisis (2004) and History and Climate Change, a Eurocentric Perspective (2001), and continued with the informal trilogy: Engaging the Cosmos: Astronomy, Philosophy and Faith (2006); The Geography of Human Conflict: Approaches to Survival (2009); and The Bounds of Liberalism: The Fragility of Freedom.

Reviews

"Neville Brown has used his vast knowledge of history and geography in a fascinating way to give us deeper insights into how these key influences on human life have combined to shape our course. At this time we should be thinking widely and challenging familiar boundaries of thought. Brown leads the way with a very important book. I commend it warmly." -- Robert O'Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, Oxford University and former Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies "'Geopolitics' is a much misunderstood term that is over-used in modern politics. Neville Brown puts geopolitics back where it belongs - as a scientific and particular way of interpreting world politics that offers both explanation and meta-prediction. And he does so in a way that is both delightful and impressive. On the basis of a lifetime of scholarship and an eye for the fascinating and amusing he offers a sweep of history, culture and science that is as breathtaking as it is riveting. If students of global politics are frightened of being changed simply by reading one book, they should stay away from this one. It will stretch and convert them in a single reading." -- Professor Michael Clarke, Director, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies "Professor Brown's scope is extremely wide. Its historical span extends from proto-human to modern times, its geographical throughout our troubled planet and the Inner Space around it. Many threads are brought together to consider present and future circumstances: the strategic balance shifting eastwards; the displacement of Cold War rivalries with new antagonisms; accelerating change in technology, ecology and demography; failed or failing states. Those involved in or otherwise concerned about the difficult decisions we face, strategic and economic, will be far better informed for having read this impressive book." -- General Sir Mike Jackson, formerly Chief of General Staff "Neville Brown was already a leading figure in Strategic Studies when today's decision-makers were undergraduate students. A lifetime in the field has qualified him, almost uniquely, to paint 'the bigger picture' by integrating history, geography and strategic analysis into a continuum which broadens horizons as it deepens understanding." -- Dr Julian Lewis MP, Shadow Defence Minister