Borderlines and Borderlands (Alexander C. Diener & Joshua Hagen, 2010)

I went on a little geography book binge a few years ago, meaning I added a bunch of titles to my to read list and didn't read them. Until now. In fact, this book finally exhausts the project for the foreseeable future. I think I stumbled on this one a couple years back while flipping through a catalog or Choice cards while at my old job. I would frequently find stuff that didn't work for the library, but I wanted to read for myself. They tend to be a little offbeat and as they show up here I'll make a note of them.

This book skews fairly academic. It's written by academics using mostly academic-style writing. However it never went over my head, in the way one of the previous entries (Evolution of a Nation) did. Yet it isn't targeting a broad current affairs audience the way The Revenge of Geography does. I think the best audience for the book is adults who pored over maps as kids and were fascinated by some of the weird shapes they would come across. While this is hardly at the level of How the States Got Their Shapes, nor is it as encyclopedic, both books are certainly intrigued by boundaries and how they came to be.