In recent years a spate of books and articles have argued that the world today is so mobile, so interconnected, and so integrated that it is, in one prominent assessment, flat. But as Harm de Blij contends in The Power of Place, geography continues to hold billions of people in an unrelenting grip. We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively. From our mother tongue to our father's faith, from medical risks to natural hazards, where we start our journey has much to do with our destiny, and thus with our chances of overcoming obstacles in our way. Incorporating a series of revealing maps, de Blij focuses on the rough terrain of the world's human and environmental geography. Maps of language distribution suggest why English, the Latin of today, may become as hybridized as its forerunner. The fateful map of religion casts a shadow of what de Blij calls endarkenment over the future of the planet in a time of increasinly destructive weaponry. De Blij also looks at the ways we are redefining place so as to make its power even more potent than it has been, with troubling implications for the future. To a traveler looking down from the business-class compartment of a transcontinental airliner, the looks a lot flatter than it does to a farmer gazing out of the doorway of a village hut. In this revealing work, de Blij brings us us back to Earth to uncover the all-too-rugged contours of place.