A comprehensive treatment of the professionalization and institutionalization of the academic discipline of geography in Europe and North America, with emphasis on the 20th century and the last quarter of the 19th. It consists of entirely new essays written by some of the world's leading experts in the history of geography. No other book has ever attempted coverage of this sort. Although it is aimed at geographers, both professionals and neophytes, the book could enlighten readers from other fields, especially practitioners of the social and earth sciences, as well as historians of science and education. The chapters are rather brief, but they provide a firm foundation for further discussion of the issues that they raise, and it is hoped that they will be followed by lengthier writings, perhaps even book-length studies, of the subject by the present authors or others.
1. Introduction.- 2. History of German Geography: Worldwide Reputation and Strategies of Nationalisation and Institutionalisation.- 3. Geography in France: Context, Practice, and Text.- 4. A Partial Biography: The Formalization and Institutionalization of Geography in Britain since 1887.- 5. Modern Geography in Italy: From the Archives to Environmental Management.- 6. Geography and Geographers in the Netherlands since the 1870s: Serving Colonialism, Education, and the Welfare State.- 7. Stories on the Making of Geography in Sweden.- 8. Geography in Russia: Glories and Disappointments.- 9. Academic Geography, American Style: An Institutional Perspective.- 10. The Development of Geographical Study in Canada, 1870-2000.
...the book should be in every university library. (Progress in Human Geography, 28:2 (2004)