ABSTRACT
If geography were accurately represented by the man the Little Prince encountered on the sixth planet of his galactic journey, if indeed the one thing the child cared most about meant nothing to the geographer, then this volume would never have come to be. I grew up, as perhaps did many readers, with a sense of geography as the one subject most to be avoided. “A geographer,” the man of the sixth planet explained to the Little Prince, “is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts,” or, to quote from a t-shirt I have stuffed in my drawer, “Geography is where it’s at.” This is not the subject matter most of us would consider to be extremely compelling, intellectually, morally, or otherwise, and thank goodness there is more to say from the perspective of geography than that location counts.
