Before reading this book, I did not know about many of the walls around the world of which the author explored in depth. The historical background of walls in different countries and where we stand today was fascinating. As long as there are humans on this planet there will be walls, even invisible ones in our hearts and minds to separate ourselves from others we don't know or are afraid of. ( )

An absolutely phenomenal book not just on current politics of borders around the world, but even history, and other politics, culture identities, and other current event matters that are involving so many areas around the world - not just Trump and his wall.

Unbiased as well, which is a rarity for something of this breadth and scope. Not pro-immigration or anti-immigration, not pro-conservative or pro-progressive or liberal or this or that or this or that or this or that or this or that, the book does a good job of showing WHY there are border walls and WHY they will probably always be there. Why Americans had walls along Mexico before Trump, why Trump wants the wall, why wanting a wall doesn't make you racist, why not wanting a wall is also a good idea, etc.

And not just America. The book covers South America, UK, Europe, Middle East, Israel, etc. The scope of this book showcases all the diverse settings of the world and all of the various walls and all of the topics and issues and politics surrounding why the walls are there is fantastic and done so well. For anyone who wants to get more familiar with the global climate insofar as politics, history, immigration, migrations, etc, this is definitely a wonderful book to pick up to read.

This is "book 3" of a series by Tim Marshall. I'm hoping when I return this tomorrow to the library that they'll have the first two books of the series, because this was fantastic. ( )

The Age of Walls is a book by a man named Tim Marshall. It discusses the ideas of building walls despite our trend towards globalization. With the internet, it becomes difficult to keep out ideas and dissent, but many countries have their ways to do this.

Walls have a long and storied history on this planet. The one that immediately comes to my mind is The Great Wall of China. It was built ages ago to prevent the entry of Barbarians into China. Nowadays, China has another wall that is more modern, a Firewall. Its internet is defended from dissent and reality in some cases by having the state control the flow of information to its people. I did not realize that such a thing was happening since I figured that China was so advanced. I guess I didn’t realize that there are still a lot of people barred from basic necessities and education. Allow me to elaborate further; if you live in China, you have to register yourself with your name, your parents’ names, where you are from, and so on. If you live in the West of the country, you have less opportunity for higher education and so on. If you move to Shanghai, you are still barred from higher education since you came from the west and you are not registered in Shanghai.

Then there is the massive Elephant in the Room, Trump’s Border Wall. I mean, I am an American after all. What else could I possibly talk about in this context? I feel that the Trump Wall is and was a foolhardy venture. I don’t even think I am in the minority on this. How do you build a wall of that length and magnitude without it being really expensive? You can’t, apparently. This is due to several problems that people might have pointed out before. People have private land abutting the US/Mexico Border and alongside it runs the Rio Grande River, which is not something you can build a wall on. Also, we could enclose the entire border of the United States but that wouldn’t stop everyone. Why not fence the US/ Canada Border? The author argues that it would be better served to create jobs in Mexico rather than just build walls, but who wants to do that?

Anyway, Marshall goes over different countries and places where they believe they need walls to defend themselves from the other; India, Israel, The Middle East, Africa, the UK, and some areas of Europe. Some of the walls I read about were really obscure to me. Hadrian’s Wall is probably the most prominent example, but there are several other ones I did not know about. I always forget about the problems many countries have since I hate reading the news. So the Wall in Israel was news to me, and so was the Wall in India.

The book was pretty good. Despite it being the third in a series, it did not feel like it. I did not feel left out of the conversation since I had not read the first two. ( )