'A captivating and compelling account of how civilisations have made use of natural landscapes for their long-term benefit. From the astounding Incan road system to the building of Chicago and the Panama canal, humans have a long history of shaping the Earth to build connections between ourselves. Samson demonstrates how we are not always prisoners of geography, but increasingly it's masters' - Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of ORIGINS: How the Earth Shaped Human History 'From railroads colonisers dreamed of building turning in projects designed by Africans, through to what travel routes will be used again when there is no longer a border within Korea, Earth Shapers tells stories that have been ignored because they do not fit the old narrative; a book that reshapes our story of global human geography' - Danny Dorling, 1971 Professor of Geography, University of Oxford 'Modern geography is the geography of our personal, political and sociological souls. We urgently need to know what we are. Samson holds up a mirror, showing us ourselves reflected in what we've done. Fascinating, original and prescient' - Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild 'Humans are inveterate environmental meddlers. No guide to their excesses is more eloquent, more learned, more surprising, more amusing or more convincing than Maxim Samson. His lively language and minatory message are as entertaining as they are unsettling' - Felipe Fernández-Armesto, William P.

Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame.