In Conversation with Ishaan Tharoor, Foreign Affairs writer at The Washington Post and Miranda Bogen, Policy Analyst at Upturn

A thoughtful analysis of how our world’s borders came to be and why we may be emerging from a lengthy period of “cartographical stasis”

What is a country? While certain basic criteria—borders, a government, and recognition from other countries—seem obvious, journalist Joshua Keating’s book explores exceptions to these rules, including self-proclaimed countries such as Abkhazia, Kurdistan, and Somaliland, a Mohawk reservation straddling the U.S.-Canada border, and an island nation whose very existence is threatened by climate change. Through stories about these would-be countries’ efforts at self-determination, as well as their respective challenges, Keating shows that there is no universal legal authority determining what a country is. He argues that although our current world map appears fairly static, economic, cultural, and environmental forces in the places he describes may spark change. Keating ably ties history to incisive and sympathetic observations drawn from his travels and personal interviews with residents, political leaders, and scholars in each of these “invisible countries.”

Joshua Keating is a writer and editor at Slate where he focuses on international news, foreign policy, and social science. Before coming to Slate, he was an editor for six years at Foreign Policy. A native of Brooklyn and graduate of OberlinCollege, he currently lives in Washington, DC. Invisible Countries is his first book. 

This event is hosted by Future Tense.  Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. 

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