Human Nature in Geography

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Displaying an impressive understanding of both history and geography and an unusual range of theme, these essays, four of them hitherto unpublished, are from the lifelong work of one of the best known of American geographers, for thirty-six years a staff member of the American Geographical Society and its Director from 1938 to 1949. His subject is the impact of human emotions, motives, and behavior upon the history of geography. He moves with equal facility from an account of the methods used to measure mountain heights to discussions of the geography of demonology and the imagery in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. John Wright’s sharp, inimitable comment on the vagaries of geographical thought embodies a delightful interplay of accomplished scholarship and a puckish spirit.