Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags

When you see your nation’s flag fluttering in the breeze, what do you feel?

For thousands of years flags have represented our hopes and dreams. We wave them. Burn them. March under their colours. And still, in the 21st century, we die for them. Flags fly at the UN, on the Arab street, from front porches in Texas. They represent the politics of high power as well as the politics of the mob.

From the renewed sense of nationalism in China, to troubled identities in Europe and the USA, to the terrifying rise of Islamic State, the world is a confusing place right now and we need to understand the symbols, old and new, that people are rallying round.

In nine chapters (covering the USA, UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, international flags and flags of terror), Tim Marshall draws on more than twenty-five years of global reporting experience to reveal the histories, the power and the politics of the symbols that unite us – and divide us.

• The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World (Politics of Place Book 3)
• Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place Book 1)
• The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
• The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
• Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks
• The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century