The Edge of the Plain

How Borders Make and Break Our World

By: James Crawford

Narrated by: James Crawford

A wide-ranging journey through the history of borders and an exploration of their role in shaping our world today.

Since the earliest known marker denoting the edge of one land and the beginning of the next—a stone column inscribed with Sumerian cuneiform—borders have been imagined, mapped, moved, and fought over. In The Edge of the Plain, James Crawford skillfully blends history, travel writing, and reportage to trace these borderlines throughout history and across the globe.

The role of borders extends beyond specific sites of conflict. On the largest scale, borders define the limits of empire—the two walls in Britain that once represented the northwestern edge of the Roman Empire; the mythological eastern gate supposedly closed off by Alexander the Great; China's virtual "Great Firewall." On the smallest, human scale, cell walls are the last physical barrier against disease, after lines of quarantine have failed.

Borders are as old as human civilization, and focal points for today's colliding forces of nationalism, climate change, globalization, and mass migration. The Edge of the Plain illuminates these lines of separation past and present, how we define them—and how they define us.

©2022 James Crawford (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Highly Entertaining and Insightful

I adore this book. Currently, I am listening to Crawford's "Fallen Glory." That is also fantastic.

The author's thesis unites his case studies brilliantly. Borders may be as old as time. But they are often social constructs that the powerful can ignore (for example, Europeans displacing natives) or employ (the USA or Europeans restricting migration) as they deem necessary. Now, however, Crawford writes presciently, how can a border stop a virus or a changing climate.

Read or listen to this book for the sheer joy of reading

There is specific information about areas of the globe that you may not have been hearing about. There is a narrative thread that gently hums throughout. There

Disjointed and grasping

Not my cup of tea. Thought it was disjointed and grasping at a theme that doesn’t gel