Divided

“Accomplished, well researched and pacey … for anyone who wants to look beyond the headlines and explore the context of some of the biggest challenges facing the world today, it is fascinating” – City AM
“One of the best books about geopolitics you could imagine” – Nicholas Lezard, Evening Standard, on Prisoners of Geography

Walls are going up. Nationalism and identity politics are on the rise once more. Thousands of miles of fences and barriers have been erected since the turn of the century, and they are redefining our political landscape.

There are many reasons why walls go up, because we are divided in many ways: wealth, race, religion, politics. In Europe the divisions of the past decade threaten not only European unity, but in some countries liberal democracy itself. In China, the Party’s need to contain the divisions wrought by capitalism will define the nation’s future. In the USA the rationale for the Mexican border wall runs deeper than the need to control illegal immigration; it taps into the fear that the USA will no longer be a white majority country during the course of this century.

Understanding what has divided us, past and present, is essential to understanding much of what’s going on in the world today. In eight chapters covering China; the USA; Israel; the Middle East; India and Bangladesh; Africa; Europe and the UK, bestselling author Tim Marshall presents an unflinching and essential overview of the fault lines that will shape our world for years to come.

***** "Informative and timely ... a readable primer on the world's biggest problems" -- Daily Express; "A timely and exhilarating clamber over the walls of history" -- Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads; "Accomplished, well researched and pacey ... for anyone who wants to look beyond the headlines and explore the context of some of the biggest challenges facing the world today, it is a fascinating and fast read" -- City AM; "Accessible and timely ... ultimately, Marshall's lesson is one that we should all heed: differences can be overcome" -- Prospect; "A very knowledgeable, timely book and a good primer on current problems in a longer-term context" -- Irish News; "Perceptive ... Marshall examines the walls - physical, religious, ethnic, psychological - that fence people off or, at times, pen them in... He has written frankly about the world. We deny this at our own peril" -- The National; "Striking words ... Tim Marshall performs the daunting, yet highly pertinent, task of trying to make sense of one of the biggest issues of our times: in a world that is increasingly globalised, a backlash apparently grows ever stronger. By taking a global view, Divided successfully brings some much-needed perspective" - --Northern Slant

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than thirty years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News and before that worked for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from forty countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. He is the author of Prisoners of Geography, The Age of Walls, A Flag Worth Dying For, The Power of Geography, and The Future of Geography.

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