At the end of August 2008, the first comprehensive publication came out in th Czech Republic, whose ambition is to provide complex and at the samo time complete summary of economic and social geography and its partial disciplines. Experts from three universities (Masaryk University in Brno, Palacký Univesity in Olomouc, and South-Bohemian University in České Budějovice) cooperated on the publication. Authors of all chapters have long been dealing with the problems of economic and social geography, both as univesity teachers and within their research projects. Also, all the authors are closely related to the geographical school in Brno.
The authors have managed to put together a relatively apt picture about the development, situation and main trends of the contemporary economic and social geography. The chapters are made up by individual partial disciplines of the economic and social geography - population and settlement geography, agricultural geography, manufacturing geography, transportation would be identical, which was definitely not an easy task. Although the chapters come as separate texts with tehir own lists of references, their structure and the given scheme have been largely kept.
As a whole, the chapters on partial disciplines of the economicand social geography can be assessed at a very high level. The development and the macroview of spatial differentiation within the global setting are dealt with very clearly. I can see certain discrepancies in the descriptions and applications of new research methods, which are indicators of new approaches, trends and information on individual disciplines.
The following chapters are of different character: the introductory part called "Development of Modern Geographical Thinking", and two closing chapters entitled "Global Environmental Problems" and "Regions and Regionalization". All three aptly complement the key part on partial disciplines and, in my opinion, are the most inportant contributions of the publication. Apart from providing basic information, they also take a closer look and explain the theoretical and methodological background both theoretically (geographical thinking, regions and regionalization), and at the same time with respect to its application and research (environmental issues, regions, regionalization).
The clear arrangement of the publication is also largely due to indices at the end of the book which enable easy orientation throughout the texts. What is also of outstanding quality is the graphical layout of the publication in all chapters, the overall design of the book and all small details. I particularly appreciate the quality, clear arrangement and informative value of all graphical supplements. In any caes, all pictures - even the ones that were taken over from other resources - were modified and are presented in an excellent technical and graphical quality and at the same time in a unified style.
The publication on "Brno geographers" is due tu its complexity unique on the Slovak and Czech market and fills up a considerable vacuum and demand for a detailed geographical (spatial) publication of such king. The last such book dealing with the issue of economic and social geography was "Základy teórie a metodológie socioekonomickej geografie (The Basic of Theory and Methodology of Socio-Economic Geography)" by Ivanička, which was published more than twenty years ago. The geographical community desperately needed such a publication also for reason of its presentation, popularization and publicity. It should therefore become an inseparable part of every (not only geographical) library.
The book is available on our e-shop.
Moravian Geographical Reports, vol. 16, 3/2008, Marián HALÁS
