author
John Kirtland Wright
1891–1969
A thoughtful American geographer, he helped widen the field beyond maps and measurements by asking how people imagine the world as well as describe it. His work on cartography, geographical thought, and “geosophy” gave later scholars a richer way to think about place.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1891, he became one of the most distinctive American geographers of the twentieth century. He studied at Harvard and went on to spend much of his career with the American Geographical Society, where he served as librarian, director, and historian of the institution.
He is best remembered for work that joined careful scholarship with intellectual curiosity. Alongside studies in cartography and the history of geography, he introduced the idea of geosophy—the study of the world as people understand and imagine it—which helped open geography to more human-centered questions.
Wright also wrote extensively about the development of his field, including books such as Geography in the Making. Readers interested in the history of ideas will find in his work a lively mind concerned not only with where things are, but with how knowledge about the world is formed.