'World Geography' (Student Edition and Teacher's Wraparound Edition)

by Richard G. Boehm - published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill

World Geography - Student Edition (ISBN 0-02-822995-9).
World Geography - Teacher's Wraparound Edition (ISBN 0-02-822997-5).

The structure of this book is based on a regional approach making it very similar to Geography The World And Its People (also published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill). At the start of the book there is a reference atlas, a nice touch and one which would prove a welcome addition to many British geography textbooks. This is followed by Unit 1 - 'Looking at the World' in which a framework for studying geography is laid out. This section also contains a Geography Skills Handbook dealing with a wide variety of skills which are frequently touched on in the exercises found throughout the main part of this book.

Units 2-11 then deal with different regions of the world:

  • The United States and Canada
  • Latin America
  • Europe
  • Russia and the Eurasian Republics
  • North Africa and Southwest Asia
  • Africa South of the Sahara
  • South Asia
  • East Asia
  • Southeast Asia
  • Australia, Oceania, and Antarctica.

Each unit is self contained with its own profile with maps and data, as well as a series of chapters detailing the physical and cultural geography of the region and a look at the region today. This set up, whilst it may appear somewhat rigid, does ensure that all the regions are given uniform coverage. Interspersed throughout the units are a number of Case Studies such as 'Out of Ozone and ' The Dying Aral Sea' as well as double page spreads about Linking World Cultures, Geography and History and Geography Connections. All of which help to integrate geography into the wider curriculum that students encounter.

The Teacher's Wraparound Edition of this book is truly staggering. For a start it offers performance assessment strategies for all 34 chapters with ideas to enrich the classroom instruction students receive. Each chapter also has its own organizer with lesson objectives, and activities have been coded into one of four categories:

  • Basic activities for all students
  • Average activities for average to above-average students
  • Challenging activities for above-average students
  • Limited English Proficiency activities.

For those teachers who are not subject specialists the answers to all exercises and chapter reviews can be found in this Teacher's Edition, a welcome safety net if you are pressed for time or just want reassuring that you right! The Did you know? sections can help enrich the lessons with additional information and there are numerous suggestions for extra credit tasks.

Finally the book contains links to an astounding range of resources available for purchase from Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, ranging from lesson plans to workbooks, an environmental issues handbook and map transparencies. Videodisc, VHS and software materials also help to further support the text - a quite staggering range of resources for those British teachers used, at most to a set of photocopy masters to accompany their texts.

In summary then for any American style geography course World Geography has to be your first choice of text, even without the support materials available it stands above any other comparable texts I have seen. There must also surely be room for this book in many a library in a British style school or college, the volume of information this books contains should not be ignored.

My thanks to Liz Nuttall at McGraw-Hill for providing review copies of these books.

(Reviewed February 9th 1997.)