North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent

by Thomas F. McIlwraith

This classic text retains the superb scholarship of the first edition in a thoroughly revised and accessibly written new edition. With both new and updated essays by distinguished American and Canadian authors, the book provides a comprehensive historical overview of the formation and growth of North American regions from European exploration and colonization to the second half of the twentieth century. Collectively the contributors explore the key themes of acquisition of geographical knowledge, cultural transfer and acculturation, frontier expansion, spatial organization of society, resource exploitation, regional and national integration, and landscape change. With six new chapters, redrawn maps, a new introduction that explores scholarly trends in historical geography since publication of the first edition, and a new final chapter guiding students to the basic sources for historical geographic enquiry, North America will be an indispensable text in historical geography courses.

Genres: Geography

516 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Mike Parkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

{review of older 1990 edition, edited by Robert Mitchell and Paul Groves}. This is a solid overview of the historical developments and geographical factors that led to the current spatial arrangements of people and places in the United States and Canada. I would have liked more on 20th century geographical developments, as there are only two short chapters to discuss topics such as the migration of American blacks from the south, the suburbanization of American urban areas, and the growth of regions such as the Sunbelt. Much of the same content as this volume is covered in more depth in Donald Meinig’s excellent four-volume “Shaping of America” series; an advantage of this volume is that it includes several strong chapters on the development of Canada, which is outside the scope of Meinig’s work. Don’t be put off by the extremely dry and theoretical introductory chapter; if you like maps and places, you should enjoy the remainder of the book.