Connectography is one of those books that tries looking at something differently. In the case of Connectography, if I’m being extremely simple, that something is maps. Parag Khanna essentially discusses how he thinks maps will change in the future. The world will be divided less by political and geographical boundaries and more by economic interests, specifically logistics.
Khanna offers up examples to support his argument. He looks at Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and discusses how countries, like China, have used them to grow and expand. Khanna essentially says, that logistics will rule the world. While that may be a simplification, it certainly gets to the essence of the book.
Now, I liked this book. It wasn’t great by any means. If I were being snarky, and I am about to be, I’d say Connectography is like a Malcolm Gladwell wrote a travel journal on his phone. I really like Gladwell and Connectography wants to change the paradigm of thinking like Gladwell often does but it comes up short. COnnectography feels more opinion and anecdotally based rather than the cumulation to detailed research. I don’t mean to disparage the book by any means, I enjoyed the different viewpoint, but it didn’t offer as much as I thought it could. The opening chapter and introduction snagged me but never really delivered on the promises.
Overall, Connectography is a good book with an interesting idea.