Alastair Bonnett

Alastair Bonnett is a professor of social geography and a writer interested in places that resist simple boundaries. Beyond the Map examines enclaves, new islands, hidden landscapes, disputed territories, and experiments in creating alternative communities. The University of Chicago Press edition presents these locations as challenges to assumptions about what maps include and what they leave out. Bonnett’s academic work at Newcastle University spans human geography, political ideas, place, and nostalgia, while his books bring those subjects to a general audience. His wider work includes Unruly Places, The Geography of Nostalgia, The Age of Islands, and How to Be Original. Beyond the Map first appeared through Aurum Press in the United Kingdom before its Chicago edition, linking travel writing and cultural geography through short, place-centered narratives.