University Global Geography Book Review: Choked and Age of Walls

This report presents a comprehensive book review of Beth Gardiner's 'Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution' and Tim Marshall's 'The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations are Changing Our World'. The review, written for a global geography course, analyzes the authors' viewpoints, main arguments, and supporting evidence, exploring themes of air pollution, societal barriers, and their impact on human geography. The reviewer highlights the economic and political forces shaping air quality and the complexities of national divisions, economic sanctions, and cultural differences. The analysis connects the books to broader geographical themes, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each work and their relevance to understanding contemporary global challenges. The review concludes by emphasizing the value of both books in illuminating issues of human mobility, demographics, and the effects of political and ideological differences on human interaction and health.

Human Geography 1
Book Review: Choked By Beth Gardiner and Age Of Walls By Tim Marshall
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Global geography
Book review: Choked by Beth Gardiner and Age of Walls by Tim Marshall
Air, simple when mentioned but so fundamental in the support of human life and life of
living organisms in general, Beth Gardiner brings out a vivid illustration in his book, chocked:
Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. The most captivating idea in the book is how around
the world, both large or small poor and rich countries in their quest for industrialization, pollute
the environment (Gardiner, 2019). Statistics shows that over seven million peoples lose their
lives from respiratory complications caused by poisonous air we breathe including hundreds of
thousands of American citizens. Beth offer readers a trip around the world through halls of
power, fogged London streets and city of Washington explaining the most modern-day plagues
and how pollution has really change the form of life. She exposes a powerful theme, the
economic forces and political super powers control the quality of air we breathe. It is so ironical
how these super power countries constantly convene conference, seminars and pacts that are
geared towards fighting for pure and clean and better future for the people.
Another sky News editor and at the same time has served as BBC journalists, Marshall
uses his over twenty years of experience to explore the complexity that has existed between
nations, places and people in his book of The Age of Wall: How Barriers Between Nations are
Changing our World (Marshall, 2019). He gives an explanation and justifications on how the
nations would survive without the notion of ‘us and them’. He presents a well prescient summary
of the most delicate nations, ethics and regional of all times. He incorporates most of the
prominent physical barriers such as the Berlin wall, the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall,

Book Review 3
etc. Marshall provides organized thoughts in geographically related evidences in addressing
various themes, dedicating themes in every chapter (Marshall, 2019).
In his book, Marshall connect the historical pasts with the recent time in his writings, by
outlining in summaries of his findings on daring issues such as unseen barriers in world’s
economy, trade sanctions, delicate national policies, ethnicity and racial discriminations and
regional divisions of the century. He explains a typical example of the china’s Tibet and the
Uighurs, the embattled challenge of nativism, immigration issues and the notorious racial
discrimination in the United States, the Palestine border wall with Jews in Israel, his courage is
just exceptional when he addresses the secular dictatorship in most of feared middle east
governments, the social barriers caused by tribalism in India, artificial political boundaries,
colonialisms and refugees in African. Marshall brings out the context of global geography and
how leaders make decisions that negatively affect the life of their subject for example the
prolonged Brexit quest by United Kingdom (Marshall, 2019). The book The Age of walls is
very relevant to the latest studies of human geography as most of the issues articulated and
illustrations used in this book are the main themes addressed in global geography textbooks
therefore I find hs publications quite easy to familiarize with.
Other than physical barriers and walls, The Age of Walls, shows the most compelling
themes of non-physical walls such as economic divisions, cultural demographics, religious
differences that poses a strong barriers among believes. Religious differences have been misused
by terrorists to threaten human geography. For example in Norther Ireland, their traditional
identity with Protestantism that justify the mappings in most human geographical textbooks, that
portrays the predominantly of the protestant religion in Norther parts of Ireland (Marshall,
2019).

Other the hand, Beth in her publication, brings out the essential elements that support the
social wellbeing and health of human geography. Taking a trip to his second chapter of the of the
chocked, the ground zero. She explains the Delhi’s health situation as India receives
overwhelming visitors from all across the world, traveling to India seek medical services, does it
mean that the air in India s from a different source from the rest of the world? She gives a
thrilling answer to this question by stating that India is mindful of what they produce as gasses to
the air ensuring that her citizens are not chocked with its own air (Gardiner, 2019). Typical
example used to illustrate his point, the case study on Delhi’s children school, where the study
showed that the probability Delhi’s school suffering from respiratory illness such as pneumonia
is less compared maybe cities of Japan due to the reasons that there is less air pollution, she
compares the health status of wealthy nations and the third world countries, in his findings she
illustrates that despite develop countries has low count of infection but the rate of respiratory
infections in these countries are much higher than in developing countries (Gardiner, 2019).
I fall in love with how she articulate the process of inhalation, the human system depends
on atmospheric air, and the intake of air is fun until some contaminants get detected within the
system where they cannot be rejected out but dissolve into the our breathing system, reaching up
too respirator, hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of these impurities causing breathing
complications to human life. She choose Loss Angeles as physical region to illustrate her
thoughts of inch by inch, building into a mountain of problems that when not seriously
considered leads to loss of life. And in her last chapter, she asks a rhetoric question, to whom,
belongs the city. She gives atypical example with the city of Berlin, the dynamics of time change
an d peoples culture and behavior, she tries even to project to the future how it would look like
with the imaginable technological advancement that only focuses on economic gains with little

Book Review 5
or no consideration health impact to the human they aim to give comfortability in life (Gardiner,
2019).
In conclusion, the two authors that is Beth Gardner in her Chocked: Life and Breath in the Age
of Pollution and Tim Marshall in his The Age of walls, How Barriers Between Nations are
Changing The world, extensively illustrates focus on the major themes in global human
geography. Both writers addressed issues that affects human’s mobility, demographics, locations
and even populations measure is as much as our industrial activities, both contextual and
conceptual boundaries affects human migration and their impacts to human health. Another
theme discussed by both writers is the political, ideological and civil differences experienced in
the present world with their effects to socialization and human interaction. Education as
component of human geography is discussed into details by Tim Marshall while Beth provided a
vivid description of religion and racism and ethnicity as threats to peaceful human coexistence.

Reference
Gardiner, B. (2019). Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. University of Chicago
Press.
Marshall, T. (2019). The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our
World (Vol. 3). Scribner.