World Regions in Global Context: Peoples, Places, and Environments, 6th edition

For courses in world regional geography.

Conceptual Exploration of World Regions and the Myriad Issues Critical to Geography Today

World Regions in Global Context presents a strong global sensibility and an emphasis on current events, with examples of interdependent development, spatial and social inequality, and questions of spatial justice. The authors maintain that regions are the outcomes of the twin forces of globalization and regionalization. Therefore, each regional chapter stresses the global systems of connection that drive unique regional processes, making regions different. By studying regions, students not only learn the critical elements of different places, but also come to understand the fundamental processes that drive change.

The 6th Edition is a briefer, more visual text that still maintains its conceptual rigor by addressing today’s critical geographic themes, incorporating deeper focus on sustainability issues, new human stories from the regions, cutting-edge data visualizations and infographics, including a completely modernized cartography program, and much more.

Also Available with Mastering Geography

This title is also available with Mastering™ Geography–an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Interactive, self-paced tutorials provide individualized coaching to help students stay on track. With a wide range of activities available, students can actively learn, understand, and retain even the most difficult concepts.

Students, if interested in purchasing this title with Mastering Geography, ask your instructor for the correct package ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information.

World Regions in Global Context, 6th Edition is also available via Pearson eText, a simple-to-use, mobile, personalized reading experience that lets instructors connect with and motivate students — right in their eTextbook. Learn more.

About the Book

Up-to-date, Compelling Geographic Content

• NEW! Sustainability in the Anthropocene features and subsections explore human impacts and environmental challenges facing regions, while also discussing positive initiatives and outcomes to help empower and encourage readers.
• NEW! Faces of the Region features focus on human profiles from the regions, giving a compelling human face to each region and teasing out major regional-specific issues, including how the specific characteristics of regions (environment, history, culture, demography, economics, and geopolitics) create unique human geographies. These features mostly focus on youth, engaging students with experiences of people from distant lands who are traditionally from their own age cohort, but also feature people across the “Life Course” continuum when appropriate to the region (e.g., the aging European population).
• UPDATED! Emerging Regions features break the mold of traditional world regions, considering places not necessarily connected by space but by geopolitical and economic interests (e.g., the BRICs countries and the Arctic and Antarctica polar “regions”).
• UPDATED! Geographies of Indulgence, Desire, and Addiction highlight interesting regional connections between popular commodities. These features link people in one region to people throughout the world through a discussion of the local production and global consumption of one of the region's primary commodities.
• UPDATED! Visualizing Geography case studies explore data and critical geographic concepts through visualizations and infographics.
• UPDATED! Future Geographies sections explore future scenarios and possible outcomes for each region.
• NEW! Demographic Change sections contain figures and population pyramids, as well as real-world vignettes, illustrating demographic trends across world regions.
• NEW! Current Data include the latest science, statistics, and associated imagery from the 2010 Census, the 2015 PRB Population Data, and the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report.

Solid Pedagogical Features

• UPDATED! Learning Outcomes, specific to regions, connect to Apply Your Knowledge Questions, end-of-chapter questions and exercises, and MasteringGeography.
• UPDATED! Apply Your Knowledge Questions integrate lower level Bloom’s review questions to help students check their comprehension as they read.
• UPDATED! Consistency, Level, and Length have been improved with contemporary applications to illustrate abstract concepts and that appeal to and engage today’s students. There has also been an overall reduction in the word count and text density with more focus on visuals.
• UPDATED! Maps and Art have been updated with new data and more dynamic designs.
• The Global Geographies framework throughout the book emphasizes the interdependence of places and processes at different scales. Thus, one of the chief organizing principles in the book is how globalization frames the social and cultural construction of particular places and regions. This approach allows the authors to focus on a number of important concepts such as the links between global and local, the unevenness of political and economic development, and links between society and nature.
• A focus on process addresses the actions that produce the spatial patterns evident in today's world. Rather than presenting a regional snapshot in time, the authors choose to present these patterns as continually evolving entities, each with a past, a present, and a future.
• A thematic structure organizes each of the regional chapters around a consistent set of headings, which are:
• Environment, Society, and Sustainability
• History, Economy, and Territory
• Culture and Populations
• Future Geographies

• An emphasis on fundamentals explores the basics of geography: the principles, concepts, theoretical frameworks, and basic knowledge necessary to build a geographic understanding of today’s world, and to sustain a lifelong geographic imagination.
• Superior cartography and photography offer a rich, diverse visual program with hundreds of maps and photos that help professors better teach their students the important spatial elements inherent to geography.
• End-of-Chapter Thinking Geographically Questions offer higher-level writing questions to help students apply and synthesize their understanding of chapter concepts and themes.
• Mobile-Enabled Quick Response (QR) Links to media, data sources, and additional references help students visualize difficult processes and access original and outside source materials.

Also Available with MasteringGeography^TM

This title is also available with MasteringGeography—an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Interactive, self-paced tutorials provide individualized coaching to help students stay on track. With a wide range of activities available, students can actively learn, understand, and retain even the most difficult concepts.

Specific digital features include:

• NEW! eText 2.0
• Full eReader functionality includes page navigation, search, glossary, highlighting, note-taking, annotations, and more.  
• A responsive design allows the eText to reflow/resize to a device or screen. eText 2.0 will now work on supported smartphones, tablets, and laptop/desktop computers.
• In-context glossary offers students instant access to definitions by simply hovering over the key terms.
• Seamlessly integrated videos and activities allow students to watch and practice key concepts within the eText learning experience.
• Accessible (screen-reader ready).
• Configurable reading settings, including resizable type and night reading mode.

• NEW! Video Activities from sources such as the BBC, Financial Times, and Television for the Environment’s Life and Earth Report series are included in MasteringGeography. These videos provide students with applied real-world examples of physical geography in action, a sense of place, and allow students to explore a range of locations and topics.
• NEW! MapMaster 2.0 Interactive Map Activities are inspired by GIS, allowing students to layer various thematic maps to analyze spatial patterns and data at regional and global scales. Now fully mobile, with enhanced analysis tools, the ability for students to geolocate themselves in the data, and the ability for students to upload their own data for advanced map making, this tool includes zoom and annotation functionality, with hundreds of map layers leveraging recent data from sources such as the PRB, the World Bank, NOAA, NASA, USGS, United Nations, and the CIA.
• UPDATED! GeoTutor Activities help students master the toughest geography concepts with highly visual, kinesthetic activities focused on critical thinking and the application of core geography concepts.
• NEW! Mobile Field Trip videos for geography fromMichael Collier give students another avenue for exploring U.S. landscapes and the major themes of physical geoscience concepts.
• Dynamic Study Modules help students study effectively on their own by continuously assessing their activity and performance in real time. Here's how it works: students complete a set of questions with a unique answer format that also asks them to indicate their confidence level. Questions repeat until the student can answer them all correctly and confidently. Once completed, Dynamic Study Modules explain the concept using materials from the text. These are available as graded assignments prior to class, and accessible on smartphones, tablets, and computers.
• Learning Catalytics™ is an interactive, student response tool that uses students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in more sophisticated tasks and thinking. Now included with MasteringGeography with eText, Learning Catalytics enables you to generate classroom discussion, guide your lecture, and promote peer-to-peer learning with real-time analytics. Instructors, you can:
• Pose a variety of open-ended questions that help your students develop critical thinking skills.
• Monitor responses to find out where students are struggling.
• Use real-time data to adjust your instructional strategy and try other ways of engaging your students during class.
• Manage student interactions by automatically grouping students for discussion, teamwork, and peer-to-peer learning.

• Pre-Lecture Reading Quizzes ensure that students complete the assigned reading before class and stay on track with reading assignments. Reading Quizzes are 100% mobile ready and can be completed by students on mobile devices.
• Encounter World Regional Geography Google Earth Activities provide rich, interactive Google Earth explorations of world regional geography concepts, helping students visualize and explore world regions. Available with multiple-choice and short answer questions. All Explorations include corresponding Google Earth KMZ media files, and questions include hints and specific wrong-answer feedback to help coach students toward mastery of the concepts.
• Map Projections media help reinforce and remediate students on basic but challenging early map projection concepts.

Up-to-date, Compelling Geographic Content

• Sustainability in the Anthropocene features and subsections explore human impacts and environmental challenges facing regions, while also discussing positive initiatives and outcomes to help empower and encourage readers.
• Faces of the Region features focus on human profiles from the regions, giving a compelling human face to each region and teasing out major regional-specific issues, including how the specific characteristics of regions (environment, history, culture, demography, economics, and geopolitics) create unique human geographies. These features mostly focus on youth, engaging students with experiences of people from distant lands who are traditionally from their own age cohort, but also feature people across the “Life Course” continuum when appropriate to the region (e.g., the aging European population).
• UPDATED! Emerging Regions features break the mold of traditional world regions, considering places not necessarily connected by space but by geopolitical and economic interests (e.g., the BRICs countries and the Arctic and Antarctica polar “regions”).
• UPDATED! Geographies of Indulgence, Desire, and Addiction highlight interesting regional connections between popular commodities. These features link people in one region to people throughout the world through a discussion of the local production and global consumption of one of the region's primary commodities.
• UPDATED! Visualizing Geography case studies explore data and critical geographic concepts through visualizations and infographics.
• UPDATED! Future Geographies sections explore future scenarios and possible outcomes for each region.
• Demographic Change sections contain figures and population pyramids, as well as real-world vignettes, illustrating demographic trends across world regions.
• Current Data include the latest science, statistics, and associated imagery from the 2010 Census, the 2015 PRB Population Data, and the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report.

Solid Pedagogical Features

• UPDATED! Learning Outcomes, specific to regions, connect to Apply Your Knowledge Questions, end-of-chapter questions and exercises, and MasteringGeography.
• UPDATED! Apply Your Knowledge Questions integrate lower level Bloom’s review questions to help students check their comprehension as they read.
• UPDATED! Consistency, Level, and Length have been improved with contemporary applications to illustrate abstract concepts and that appeal to and engage today’s students. There has also been an overall reduction in the word count and text density with more focus on visuals.
• UPDATED! Maps and Art have been updated with new data and more dynamic designs.

Also Available with MasteringGeography^TM

This title is also available with MasteringGeography–an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Interactive, self-paced tutorials provide individualized coaching to help students stay on track. With a wide range of activities available, students can actively learn, understand, and retain even the most difficult concepts.

Specific digital features include:

• eText 2.0
• Full eReader functionality includes page navigation, search, glossary, highlighting, note-taking, annotations, and more.  
• A responsive design allows the eText to reflow/resize to a device or screen. eText 2.0 will now work on supported smartphones, tablets, and laptop/desktop computers.
• In-context glossary offers students instant access to definitions by simply hovering over the key terms.
• Seamlessly integrated videos and activities allow students to watch and practice key concepts within the eText learning experience.
• Accessible (screen-reader ready).
• Configurable reading settings, including resizable type and night reading mode.

• Video Activities from sources such as the BBC, Financial Times, and Television for the Environment’s Life and Earth Report series are included in MasteringGeography. These videos provide students with applied real-world examples of physical geography in action, a sense of place, and allow students to explore a range of locations and topics.
• MapMaster 2.0 Interactive Map Activities are inspired by GIS, allowing students to layer various thematic maps to analyze spatial patterns and data at regional and global scales. Now fully mobile, with enhanced analysis tools, the ability for students to geolocate themselves in the data, and the ability for students to upload their own data for advanced map making, this tool includes zoom and annotation functionality, with hundreds of map layers leveraging recent data from sources such as the PRB, the World Bank, NOAA, NASA, USGS, United Nations, and the CIA.
• UPDATED! GeoTutor Activities help students master the toughest geography concepts with highly visual, kinesthetic activities focused on critical thinking and the application of core geography concepts.
• Mobile Field Trip videos for geography from Michael Collier give students another avenue for exploring U.S. landscapes and the major themes of physical geoscience concepts.