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The Regional Geography of Canada.

Article Excerpt
Robert M. Bone. The Regional Geography of Canada, 4th ed. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2008. xx + 532 pp. $79.95 cloth.

The task of writing a text that successfully accounts for the vast and varied geographies that make up Canada is made challenging by the sheer spatial extent of the subject. Occupying the northern half of North America, Canada presents geographers with the opportunity to study a bewildering array of landscapes, socioeconomic processes, and cultural products. Thus, to overcome the possibility of analytical paralysis, in The Regional Geography of Canada, fourth edition, Robert Bone has continued the well-established approach within geographical scholarship of "divid[ing] a large spatial unit ... into a series of 'like places"' (5). By doing so, Bone has provided a valuable treatment of Canada's regional character, illuminating both the features of individual regions and the interaction among regions. The book is a well-written and clearly organized account that engages recent political, economic, and social developments while remaining mindful of the enduring...