This compact and accessible text provides a comprehensive, issue-oriented introduction to population geography. First grounding students in the fundamentals, Bruce Newbold then explains the tools and techniques commonly used to describe and understand population concepts using real-world issues and events. Drawing on both U.S. and international cases, he explores such pressing concerns as HIV/AIDS, international migration, refugee movements, fertility, mortality, resource scarcity, and conflict. Every chapter includes both methods and focus sections to provide a more in-depth discussion of the ideas and concepts developed in the book. In addition, a wide array of maps, tables, and figures illustrate and enhance the cases. Newbold highlights the geographical perspective-with its ability to provide powerful insights and bridge disparate issues-by emphasizing the roles of space and place, location, regional differences, and diffusion. Arguing that an understanding of population is essential to prepare for the future, this cogent text will provide upper-division undergraduates with a thorough grasp of the field.

Author Biography

K. Bruce Newbold is professor of geography at McMaster University. He is the author of Six Billion Plus: World Population in the Twenty-first Century.