Modern Military Geography

Galgano (a professor of geography at Villanova U. and a former Army officer) and Palka (geography, US Military Academy at West Point) present 23 contributed chapters that explore contemporary and historical military subjects from the perspective of the military geographer. The text opens with chapters introducing fundamental military and geographic concepts to non-military professionals and non-geographers, respectively, and reviewing the history, scope, and recent developments within military geography in the US, including new thinking on the relationships between environmental security and regional stability and between climate change and potential regional instability in the Arctic. Classic historical and contemporary case studies are then presented exploring geographic factors of military operations. The remaining chapters address emergent issues such as military lands as spatial analogs for the army, Aeolian processes (such as dust storms) and military operations, infrastructure vulnerability and disaster response to a possible catastrophic earthquake on the Oregon coast, Vietnam and the long-term impacts of warfare on the physical landscape, stability operations and competing land claims in "post-conflict" Afghanistan and Iraq, the strategy and reality of China's growing economic and military power upon Taiwan, and ungoverned space in western Pakistan and the "Global War on Terror." Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Francis A. Galgano is a former Army officer, an Associate Professor of Geography, and the Chair of the Department of Geography and the Environment at Villanova University

Eugene J. Palka is a Colonel and Director of Student-Athlete Academic Services at Eastern Kentucky University . He is the former Head of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point