“A Note to the Teacher: Events of the past twenty years have wrought a profound change in the American attitude toward the study of geography. Americans have pretty generally come to realize that the oceans have lost their power to separate America from the problems and distempers of the rest of the world. The "hot war" followed by the "cold war" in Europe, Communist aggression in Asia and the threat of further aggression, increasing unrest and discord among the peoples of Africa and elsewhere—all have touched the lives of Americans in one way or another, and have influenced the behavior of their government. Americans have pretty generally come to feel that some of the most serious problems of America are world problems with their roots in world geography. Many American educators have come to feel that the study of geography, which in the past has been largely confined to the elementary school and the college, should be an important part of the curriculum of the secondary school as well. The secondary school is the logical place to strengthen and to expand the knowledge of descriptive regional geography which pupils have acquired in the elementary school. It is the logical place to build on this foundation a knowledge of the world-wide geographic forces which have come to play so vital a role in the lives of us all. Up to about two decades ago, the American secondary schools had generally failed to do this. Where they had taught geography- at all they had presented it in the severely restricted form of physical or economic geography, or as a relatively unemphasized adjunct to courses in history and current events. More recently, many educators have come to feel that geography so limited fails to meet the requirements of intelligent living in the modern world. They have come to feel that a broad training in world geography should be an essential part of both the natural science and the social science programs in the American secondary school. Most heartily sharing this feeling, the author and publishers of this book offer it as the basis for a thorough, realistic, and dynamic course in world geography at the secondary-school level.”