I’ve been sick much of the past week, with rest the best prescription.  As I’ve rested, I’ve read.  And read.  And read some more. I should get sick more often. Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World is a book I bought for my father for Christmas.  But in leafing through it at Politics & Prose, it piqued my interest, so I picked up a second copy for myself.  I’m glad I did. Author Tim Marshall is a long-time British foreign affairs journalist.  In this easy-to-read yet thought-provoking book, Marshall writes “The landscape imprisons their leaders (of all nations, big and small), giving them fewer choices and less room to maneuver than you might think.” This is a geopolitical book, which looks at the ways in which international affairs can be understood through geographical factors.  For my friends in the Foreign Service or at the World Bank, this is no doubt old hat.  But I don’t read much in either geopolitical theory or international affairs, and so I found this a …