Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics". Elliott & Thompson. Archived from the original on 25 October 2018 . Retrieved 7 August 2015. At first I found this a difficult book to break into, as you're thrown right in at the end of the late 1990s after the breakup of Yugoslavia and at the dawn of the Kosovo War, with very little context for how you're there or what has happened, or who the major players are. Context is limited and drip-fed and I really feel that Marshall would benefit from having a chapter explaining more about this complex conflict. This does create a sense of emotional distancing, as this book focuses on the politics rather than the people affected on the ground, and it therefore runs in a different vein of war correspondence and journalism to the likes of Marie Colvin. However, when read interspersed with Colvin's collected writings on Kosovo, I found my view of the conflict enhanced dramatically. It feels like you have been dropped into the middle of the book rather than at the beginning. A lot of information and names are thrown at you without any context or summation of what is going on and why we are where we are. From the British strategy to NATO to the Serbs to the KLA it all feels a bit of complex mess. Hang in there. I made a list of names and positions as I went. Essentially the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) ‘intend to liberate Kosovo from Serbian rule’. They want independence. They see the Serbs as the oppressor.

This book is a memoir of the author’s experience as a journalist in the Kosovo war, but it also tries to be a lot more and fails pretty badly. After three years as IRN’s Paris correspondent and extensive work for BBC radio and TV, Tim joined Sky News. Reporting from Europe, the USA and Asia, Tim became Middle East Correspondent based in Jerusalem. Nicholas Lezard (13 August 2015). "Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall - review". Evening Standard. Appropriate medium & duration: (5/5)
As mentioned above, I thought the book was very engaging, so I think it’s just the right medium and duration to tell this story.

Timothy John Marshall (born 1 May 1959) is a British journalist, author, and broadcaster, specialising in foreign affairs and international diplomacy. Marshall is a guest commentator on world events for the BBC, [1] Sky News and a guest presenter on LBC, and was formerly the diplomatic and also foreign affairs editor for Sky News. During over twenty-four years at Sky News, Marshall reported from thirty countries and covered the events of twelve wars. He has reported from Europe, the United States, (covering three US Presidential Elections), and Asia, as well as from the field in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He spent the majority of the 1999 Kosovo crisis in Belgrade, where he was one of the few western journalists who stayed on to report from one of the main targets of NATO bombing raids. He was in Kosovo on the day NATO troops advanced into Pristina.

Simon Redfern (13 September 2014). "Book of the week: 'Dirty Northern B*st*rds!': Britain's Football". The Independent. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. The 10 Maps That Tell you Everything You Need to Know about Global Politics". Newsweek. 1 August 2015. Timothy John Marshall is a British journalist, author, and broadcaster, specialising in foreign affairs and international diplomacy. Marshall is a guest commentator on world events for the BBC, Sky News and a guest presenter on LBC, and was formerly the diplomatic and foreign affairs editor for Sky News. When getting into that diplomatic territory, Marshall begins to quote a lot of unnamed inside sources, which may be unavoidable- but in fact he barely provides any sources at all, with a feeble bibliography. Another of his digressions from his own experience is his coverage of the ‘Bulldozer Revolution’, and though one can’t fault him for discussing the event despite his absence, he seems to draw everything all from one source. It is Oct-1998 and the Kosovo War is in full swing. I was really looking forward to the boots on the ground war reporting, but that was not really the case, and this was not really that kind of war. It was not like he could embed himself in a platoon of British soldiers on the ground as there were none.Marshall's blog, 'Foreign Matters', was short-listed for the Orwell Prize 2010. [8] In 2004 he was a finalist in the Royal Television Society's News Event category for his Iraq War coverage. He won finalist certificates in 2007, for a report on the Mujahideen, and in 2004 for his documentary 'The Desert Kingdom' which featured exclusive access to Crown Prince Abdullah and his palaces.

The bulk of the book was written in the early 2000s, and so a short introduction and conclusion seek to bring it up to the present; unfortunately the latter is mostly focused on Russia.

Marshall was educated at Prince Henry's Grammar School, a state-funded comprehensive school in the market town of Otley, near Leeds, West Yorkshire.

Style & engagement: (4/5)
Marshall has a casual writing style that I thoroughly enjoyed, although it seemed callous at moments, especially when writing about the devastating losses experienced in the war. However, with that casual writing style came a matter-of-fact, unvarnished description of the events and politics that shaped this conflict. Often histories written by journalists have such a stuffy air to them that they get extremely dry, and Marshall breaks that pattern with this book. I ultimately found his style engaging and interesting—even useful. Writing style is definitely a plus of this book.Shadowplay - Behind The Lines & Under Fire (The Inside Story Of Europe's Last War). A book which documents the downfall of Slobodan Milošević and contains Marshall's account of his experiences during the Yugoslav Wars. (Release: June 2019)