(Part 2) Top products from r/geography

Geomorphology is fascinating, it's a story of how earth came to be what it is today! Of course, it's important to have interesting recourses and even better if it's a teacher that's passionate about the subject. I definitely recommend this book https://www.amazon.com/New-Views-Planet-Tjeerd-Andel/dp/0521447550 plus I think I've got a pdf of earth system history somewhere. Both are great for starters (the earth system one has more drawings, btw)

At lot of people mentioned some pretty cool map books already, but these are two geography-related books I'm getting for Christmas: How the States Got Their Shapes (probably better if she's American) and Guns, Germs, and Steel. The latter is less to do with maps and more to do with how geography influences civilizations. Hope that helps!

Some books I can recommend for map nerds: Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities, How to Lie With Maps, and a related book that's a bit more useful for data visualization - Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics.

The typographic maps from Axis Maps are pretty awesome and there's all kinds of map-related stuff on Etsy.

General historical geography books that are good:

Key Concepts in Historical Geography

Hodder Arnold Historical Geography (and in general I've found Hodder Arnold review texts to be useful.)

For books that are works of historical geography, broadly defined:

Late Victorian Holocausts (I actually found this book a bit disappointing, but a lot of people like it.)

The Hungry World (actually written by a historian so not very embedded in historical geography theoretically but very much in the same spirit which might be useful for you.)

American Commodities in an Age of Empire (Mona Domosh is currently president of the AAG.)

For the theory of/in geography:

For Space

This syllabus from Rutgers covers a lot of the most essential texts in human geography. I think you could skip the books and stick just to the articles and still have a really good understanding of the field.

Great Maps seems to come up sometimes when people are talking about good geography books, as well as Maps: Their Untold Stories. I have a list somewhere of good map books, I'll check when I get home.

For geology, Assembling California is pretty accessible, as are most of his books.

If they haven't read it, Guns, Germs, and Steel is pretty great for people who are interested in geography. It's more anthropology, but he talks a lot about how the physical spaces people built settlements in affected how they developed.

Do you know any more details of what kind of geology in particular they like?

One of the definitive texts in the subject was Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology by Leopold, Wolman & Miller. ($15.49! and it's available in Kindle Format!) There are newer and probably easier texts out there, but this one is fairly foundational to the field.

I might also recommend "River Meandering", Proceedings of the Conference Rivers `83, edited by Charles M. Elliot. You'll probably need to hit up the University Library for this one, and photocopy any papers you want to keep.

Which leads me to the last solution, Journal articles. They can be a little daunting at first, but if there's any chance you might want to go on in your education, you'll have to get used to reading these at some point. And eventually you might come to prefer the journal format when it comes to answering particular questions you might have.

You've already had some good suggestions, which I'd suggest following. I have a BA in geography and even after school found these interesting reads.

Cultural and Historical Geography

Eratosthenes' "Geography"

The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionized Geography

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Race And Culture: A World View

Technical, GIS, Cartography

How to Lie with Maps

Thinking About GIS: Geographic Information System Planning for Managers

An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems

I know most of these won't be of much use with a BS degree, but gives you a good foundation for thinking geographically. For the more science aspects; a good understanding of physics, chemistry, and to a lesser extent biology, will really give you a leg up when starting out.

I think you're mixing up two visually similar maps, with two highly different concepts.

This one that you're talking about. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/a/aa/Annual_Average_Temperature_Map.jpg

And this that I think you should be focusing on: http://www.authentichistory.com/1914-1920/1-overview/1-origins/MAP-1914_Colonization.jpg

Also: here is a rough map of your observations about general wellbeing. http://debitage.net/humangeography/images/GDP_per_capita.png

Countries with low levels of prosperity generally have relatively recent history of slavery or other types of subjugation effecting large swathes of the population. Africa is a perfect example as shown on the second and the third map.

There are exceptions to everything, but countries with high quality of life were either colonizers (Spain, UK, Holland), or were colonized mainly through genocide (Canada, US, Australia, some southern countries in South America).

The purposeful destruction of culture and the devaluation of whole peoples seems inseparable from the process of colonization, and it sets back the people effected for over a hundred years. Take a look at what has happened to remaining native populations of Canada, the US, and Australia, and you'll see the same patterns as what you're observing in what is called "The Global South". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide

I could go on forever but I think studying colonization and oppression will help you explore the concepts you brought forward. This is a good resource on oppression: http://www.amazon.com/Challenging-Oppression-Confronting-Privilege-Mullaly/dp/0195429702

Remember the important difference between correlation and causation!

A different question you may also be asking now is "Why did the Northerners get to oppress the Southerners?" A lot of it has to do with luck (to have metal, to learn to use it, and to be accustomed to filthy diseases), and I think this book gives a really interesting starting point. http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552

A few months ago I attended a pretty interesting lecture by Dr. Laurence Smith of UCLA promoting his book entitled The World in 2050. He predicts that the forces of demographics, natural resources, climate change, globalization, and technology will lead a huge migration to northern rim countries in the Arctic. The issues the book addresses are probably more related to your last question about the stability of different nations in terms of resources, but I'd highly recommend reading it.

tl;dl - GIS is here to stay, learn computer skills, and consider where you want to apply your skills.

I just graduated with a BA in Geography and I kinda feel bad for those few students that dodged any GIS classes. It seems to be where geography is going, if not already there, so make sure you at least take the intro course. If GIS is what you decide to focus on, it is an ever-and-rapidly-evolving thing so computer languages are more frequently required by employers (check out r/gisjobs). My department focused on python and my prof was super stoked about this book.
I have one regret, and that's not minoring or double majoring in biology. I took a biogeography course (distributions, island biogeography, etc) and a pyrogeography & fire science course. Biology would have really given me nice credentials to apply GIS to specific things a "geographer" or "GIS analyst" might not have the credentials for.
Have fun and embrace your inner geonerd!
(editted: manbearcat might like the python book I mentioned.)

Academic GIS --> Chrisman's Exploring Geographic Information Systems is a great, comprehensive look at why and how we manipulate geographic information on computers. It's completely software agnostic (applies just as well to QGIS as ArcMap) and talks about the reasoning behind GIS operations. Don't look to this for information about LiDAR or inverse Kriging, but a solid intro to information science via geography.

Check out Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America, Colin Woodward's American Nations, and Dante Chinni's Our Patchwork Nation -- these are excellent primary sources for such a project.

I took a Human Geography course in community college. Went over this book chapter by chapter. Covers loads of general information on diverse geography subjects. I really enjoyed it and still reference that book from time to time.

If anyone is truly interested in this subject:

The Myth of Continents

I had to read it for a grad class a couple years ago and it covers this question in detail. It was a tough read, and I actually forget most of it. Maybe I'll look at it again sometime soon.

The Geography of Nowhere

That's one of my favorites. Cultural geography is very broad so I don't know if there are any "essential" books, other than a textbook of course.