Invisible Lines

Maxim Samson is a geographer with specific interests in religion, education and cities. Originally from England, where he earned a PhD in Geography at the University of Leeds, Maxim now teaches at DePaul University in Chicago and chairs an international research group specialising in the geographies of religions and belief systems. In his spare time, he enjoys long-distance running, maintaining his Duolingo streak and gradually adding to his kaleidoscopic flag collection. Invisible Lines is his first book.

This absorbing book is an accessible and wide-ranging read, built upon erudition, curiosity and careful compilation. It reveals and reflects upon many types of divisions between places - stretching from the Antarctic to the Urals, and from the turfs of passionate soccer fans in Buenos Aires to linguisitic divisions in Brittany, to name but a few
A chance to see the world anew through the eyes of a wonderfully curious new writer
A fascinating book ... a truly original adventure into new ways of exploring what we mean by a sense of place
A fascinating exploration of the lesser-known and more subtle borders across the earth and the surprising ways in which they shape our lives
Endlessly interesting
Invisible Lines is a fascinating, detailed exploration of the hidden boundaries that carve up the world ... it is a pleasure to accompany Samson to the Malaria Belt, inside eruvim (markers of a single domestic space within which fewer Sabbath regulations apply), or along the border of Portugal to discover why vultures prefer not to cross it.
Old worlds enhanced, new worlds exposed and challenged ... a wise and thought-provoking series of raids across borders we thought we knew and others made visible to us, by Maxim Samson's forensic eye, for the first time
Utterly engrossing! Samson's literary atlas of the world's unseen boundaries and how they've shaped our lives demands to be read
[An] intricately detailed explanation of how each invisible line came to be, as well as what it can tell us about the world and our place within it...a fascinating read
The world is a mesh of lines. We don't normally see them, and so we blunder on, unaware of where we really are and missing out on so much. Samson's iconoclastic new geography will make the scales fall from your eyes. A tremendous and important read
A journey to the unmarked and unseen borders that shape our world ... a fascinating, extraordinary and insightful exploration of the many boundaries that define us
Samson's clear and concise writing, his engaging style and the wide range of topics he covers makes Invisible Lines an absorbing study of the boundaries we set to divide and demarcate the physical and cultural worlds and how this affects us in our day-to-day lives