Most of the book is space exploration history, and it's a fairly readable summary if you don't already know the history.

Then it shifts to a discussion of how nations on Earth will fight over "geography" not on Earth (can we really call it that?). Which, fine, nations on Earth will fight over just about anything. But as someone whose elementary school channel followed the Biosphere II experiment in Arizona very closely, I am unconvinced that humans will ever be able to live anywhere other than Earth in any significant numbers or for any longer length of time. That said, the fact that naively ambitious folks with more money than common sense think it's possible can and probably will create more problems soon enough.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Annoying rule about any book that has the word "Future" in its title: it won't start talking about the future until at least halfway through the book.
Instead, such books spend most of the time talking about the past.
Depending on how you define it, this book spends at least half the book focused on the past.

Arguably, 75% of the book recounts pasts events.
For those who know the history, this is a waste of time.

The title is annoying for another reason: it's mostly about space geography, not terrestrial geography.

If you can put aside these two issues, you'll find a fascinating book about the coming power games in space.

I love Tim Marshall’s books. I’ve probably said this before but … What that man doesn’t know about geography is likely not worth knowing. Which is to say, Marshall knows a LOT about geography and has written plenty about it. So much so that he might have exhausted terrestrial matters, because in this book he takes to the skies.
Space being the final frontier, it’s a natural progression. People have spent centuries disputing and fighting over areas of Earth and eventually, they will take their squabbling into space.
As technology progresses and more money is being poured into research and development, governments and private companies are looking to increase their presence in the outer space. The current laws governing these matters and vague and outdated, so it can be either a free-for-all or yet another source of contention, but nation after nation, people are reaching for the stars, whether for scientific, political, or purely pecuniary reasons. Okay, let’s be honest, it’s mostly the latter. From space retreats to tourism to exploiting other planets for their resources, people want to monetize space. It’s in the language itself, when the conversation turns to colonizing space. I mean, words like colony colonialism, colonization don’t particularly carry a lot of positive associations. Yet, it’s an inextricable part of the past that echoes into the present, and one day will likely feature in the future.
The question is who gets there first and how. And that’s what this book is about, basically. And Tim Marshall does a terrific job of walking you through the current situation from contextualizing it through the past examples to playing out possible space war scenarios. Marshall writing style is intelligent, erudite, and rather funny, resulting in a nonfiction book that’s as engaging as any work of fiction, but smarter than most. It educates while entertaining and makes you look up to the sky with wonder from a more informed perspective.
A great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

This will expand your space lingo if you are looking towards getting into the sci fi or space side of things. Eg Lagrange point - was able to make a connection when I read a post on space related to it.

An interesting and informative look at the race to claim the future y way of geography. Tim Marshall does a great job of charting the course of history in space by the human race. He takes us through to the present and the countries jockeying upfront in the race to put a stake in the ground in space, while grappling with the challenges of sustaining life there. He speculates and imagines future challenges grounded in science, politics, and the human propensity to dominant. This is a well written and easily digestible book about the future of geography in space. I leaned a lot and it’ll be interesting to see how the next five to ten years unfold. I definitely recommend this book. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Once again, Tim Marshall offers us a thought-provoking and fresh look at the world around us - and the skies above us, as this time he uses his geopolitical knowledge to analyze the space race.

As with his previous books on Earth, he begins by giving us a lay of the land (figuratively speaking...) and reviewing the history of human exploration of the cosmos, first in theory and, in recent decades, in practice. Even if you are familiar with most of the events described, it is so well written and witty that it will still be a pleasure to read. In the next chapters he looks at the current state of astropolitics and imagines possible future scenarios. Most interesting to me was his take on the outdated and vague space laws.

Thanks to the publisher, Scribner, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

A book in three parts:
1) A history of astronomy and space exploration
2) A survey of the current state of astropolitics (focusing primarily on China, Russia, and the United States, with one chapter summarizing the rest of the world's space programs)
3) Speculation about scenarios of conflict in space and future exploration projects

Of these, the current-day politics section is the most valuable. It's great to take the pulse of the current state of the world's space programs, especially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and attendant upheaval in Russia-US or -Europe space collaboration), and there was a lot of interesting stuff there. The other parts are much weaker. Marshall is not a historian of science, and there are many superior authors on the subject. Likewise, the speculative future-casting doesn't seem to add much. I've never been much for extrapolative flights of fancy like that, as they usually age like milk and then what's the point? The more concrete speculation about future exploration (or colonization!) projects is better, but nothing I haven't seen written about better elsewhere by those for whom science writing is more their bailiwick.

If you think the entirety of geography is naming states and capitals, this book will give you an entirely new and more accurate image of what geography is and what good it can do for us.