A generation of geography students on both sides of the Atlantic were raised on Peter Haggett's classic text, Geography: A Modern Synthesis. First published in 1972, it went through three revisions and was translated into six languages. This new version, re-titled for a new century, Geography: A Global Synthesis retains many of the features which gave the original volume such worldwide appeal. It presents geography as an integrated and integrating discipline, seeing both environmental and human geography and systematic and regional geography as intrinsically linked.

It argues the facts of geographic distributions, the techniques by which geographers study the world, and the philosophy which informs their analyses all a part of a global synthesis. This synthesis operates at a range of spatial scales from the local up to the planetary system itself. It ranges in time back to human origins and onward to human futures. The book sees geography as an essential discipline for students wishing to understand their changing world at the start of a new millennium.