Becoming a Geographer

Book excerpt: Peter Gould, a prominent, award-­winning geographer who admits to having a low threshold for boredom, offers a collection of essays that reflect his eclectic research and provocative thinking. The topics range widely and include the diffusion of AIDS, mental maps, development themes in Africa, postmodernism, and the practices of teaching and writing. Becoming a Geographer expands on Gould's influential ideas and contributions to the field. Gould values the kind of independent thought and scholarship now often frowned upon by university administrators. He has written eighteen books and more than one hundred sixty articles that have appeared in more than seventy-six different journals dur­ing his forty-year career in research and higher education—his "lifetime sabbatical"—much of it spent teaching at Penn State. A witty, graceful, engaging writer, Could situates geography in a wider social context. In this book, he brings a fresh perspective to developments in the field including the quan­titative and mathematical revolution in geog­raphy in the 1960s and 1970s. He writes with directness and clarity about the use and mis­use of mathematics in illuminating social and geographical reality. His thoughts are especially valuable for what geography offers the world of learning and its capacity to help resolve urgent prob­lems of the day.