This Fourth Edition of a well-established text on physical geography provides rigorous coverage of the topic at the undergraduate level. It includes a full-color art program and increased attention to environmental issues.

Physical Geography Made Simple focuses on developments in physical geography, including advancements in the study of landforms, weather, climate, water, soils, plants, and animals. The book first offers information on rocks and relief, weathering, slopes, and rivers and drainage basins. Topics include rock structures and landforms, crustal structure and movement, physical and chemical weathering, measurement and description of slopes, and transport, erosion, and deposition. The manuscript then ponders on glacial and periglacial landforms and desert and uropical landforms. The publication takes a look at coastal features, landscape development, and the atmosphere and its energy. The manuscript also elaborates on moisture in the atmosphere, air motion, general circulation, and weather. Discussions focus on fronts, weather prediction, planetary wind belts, pressure variations, upper air motion, adiabatic processes, and evaporation and condensation. The text is a valuable reference for geographers and readers interested in physical geography.

This ism-busting text is an enormously accessible account of the key philosophical and theoretical ideas that have informed geographical research. It makes abstract ideas explicit and clearly connects it with real practices of geographical research and knowledge. Written with flair and passion, A Student′s Introduction to Geographical Thought: Explains the key ideas: scientific realism, anti-realism and idealism / positivism / critical rationalism / Marxism and critical realism/ social constructionism and feminism / phenomenology and post-phenomenology / postmodernism and post-structuralism / complexity / moral philosophy. Uses examples that address both physical geography and human geography. Use a familiar and real-world example - ‘the beach’ - as an entry point to basic questions of philosophy, returning to this to illustrate and to explain the links between philosophy, theory, and methodology. All chapters end with summaries and sources of further reading, a glossary explaining key terms, exercises with commentaries, and web resources of key articles from the journals Progress in Human Geography and Progress in Physical Geography. A Student′s Introduction to Geographical Thought is a completely accessible student A-Z of theory and practice for both human and physical geography.

A systems-based approach to physical geography written in an easy-to-understand narrative style that is closely integrated with clear, single-concept illustrations.

What makes a nation happy? Is one country's sense of happiness the same as another's? In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about who's happy and who isn't. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren't, and Americans are somewhere in between... After years of going to the world's least happy countries, Eric Weiner, a veteran foreign correspondent, decided to travel and evaluate each country's different sense of happiness and discover the nation that seemed happiest of all. ·He discovers the relationship between money and happiness in tiny and extremely wealthy Qatar (and it's not a good one) ·He goes to Thailand, and finds that not thinking is a contented way of life. ·He goes to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and discovers they have an official policy of Gross National Happiness! ·He asks himself why the British don't do happiness? In Weiner's quest to find the world's happiest places, he eats rotten Icelandic shark, meditates in Bangalore, visits strip clubs in Bangkok and drinks himself into a stupor in Reykjavik. Full of inspired moments, The Geography of Bliss accomplishes a feat few travel books dare and even fewer achieve: to make you happier.