Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance

Jeremy Black

Narrated by Flip Crummer

Available from Audible

Book published by Indiana University Press

History and geography delineate the operation of power, not only its range but also the capacity to plan and the ability to implement. Approaching state strategy and policy from the spatial angle, Jeremy Black argues that just as the perception of power is central to issues of power, so place, and its constraints and relationships, is partly a matter of perception, not merely map coordinates. Geopolitics, he maintains, is as much about ideas and perception as it is about the actual spatial dimensions of power. Black’s study ranges widely, examining geography and the spatial nature of state power from the 15th century to the present day. He considers the rise of British power, geopolitics and the age of Imperialism, the Nazis and World War II, and the Cold War, and he looks at the key theorists of the latter 20th century, including Henry Kissinger, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington, Philip Bobbitt, Niall Ferguson, and others.

Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is author of more than 100 books including Fighting for America: The Struggle for Mastery in North America, 1519-1871 and War and the Cultural Turn. Black received the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History in 2008.

REVIEWS:

“An extremely original work.... Black has his facts well in hand, and his interpretations are convincing.”

—Kelly DeVries, Loyola University Maryland

“A germinal contribution to the study of geopolitics, international relations, and nation-state mechanisms for achieving predominance and hegemony in world affairs.... [It] is superlatively organized and written in eminently readable, clear, literary, and engaging prose.... Black has opened new frontiers of explanation and reference for future investigators.”

—Peter Brown, Rhode Island College