Placing Critical Geographies: Historical Geographies of Critical Geography. Lawrence D.Berg, UlrichBest, MaryGilmartin, and Henrik GutzonLarsen (eds). Routledge, London UK and New York USA, 2022, pp. ix + 331. <scp>ISBN</scp> 978‐1‐409‐43142‐8 (pbk).

In the Introduction to Spatial Histories of Radical Geography that I co-edited with Eric Sheppard, we wrote that our volume covered only the period from the 'mid-1950s through to [radical geography 's] intellectual consolidation in the early 1980s' (Barnes & Sheppard 2019: 2).We recognized that after our end date, radical geography was increasingly superseded by critical geography.It was 'how human geography in the round was done' (p.3).We also said that the 'capaciousness and variegation of critical geography ma [d]e telling its story more difficult compared to the earlier radical geography [and] likely requir[ing] many volumes, many editors, and many contributors' (p.3).We were partly right in our prediction.While Placing Critical Geographies: Historical Geographies of Critical Geography is only one volume (so far), it has many editors (four), and many contributors (37 authors and 15 chapters).For the most part, those editors and contributors have managed to do what we thought so difficult: to render compelling the history of critical geography in all its capaciousness and variegation.Placing Critical Geographies is an impressive book.In keeping with the disciplinary history it tells, the book's methodological approach is fundamentally geographical.The editors commit to John Agnew and David Livingstone's (2011: 16) call to 'think geographically about geography, and thereby "geographizing" geography itself'.In the editors' terms, the book is concerned with 'how space influences the social relations of knowledge production' (p.5).Geography matters all the way down.The geographizing takes two forms in the collection.The first is an emphasis on the effects of individual places in producing distinctive forms of critical geographical knowledge.That primarily means considering the shaping effects of different national institutions, politics, culture and above all, history (all chapters are organized around the nation or blocks of nations).So, for Abel Albet and Maria-Dolors Garca-Ramon, the all-but 40-year history of Franco's fascist regime in Spain (19361975) is an overbearing fact of place for Spanish critical geography.Its shadow continues to stunt Spanish critical geography's development now almost 50 years after Franco's death (Ch.13).Or again, Wing-Shing Tang argues that because of the singular and longstanding ingrained history of China and its interaction with the world, Chinese critical geography is necessarily an entirely different animal from its counterpart in the West (Ch.7).There might be surficial similarities between the two forms when they are disembedded from their respective contexts and compared, but re-embedded, it becomes obvious that each is from a different lineage, belonging to a separate genus.The focus on the nation does not produce methodological nationalism, national state centrism, however.This is because, and going to the second form of geographizing that authors practice, all chapters bring into their narrative the churn of outside international connection, exchange, networks and influence.No place is treated as an island, even islands.All the authors recognize that critical geographical knowledge is in constant geographical circulation, moving from inside to outside to inside again, and in

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