Abstract Two British introductory textbooks of human geography are selected to review:Introducing Human Geography and An Introduction to Human Geography:Issues for the 21st Century. They are mainly written by British human geographers, and also for the British market. They are quite different from the former counterparts, such as Approaching Human Geography and The Place of Geography. Introducing Human Geography is based on the postmodernism philosophy, and a large group of thirty human geographers with totally new structure of textbook in order to fully illustrate the diversity of contemporary human geography. The chapters in the textbook are short, but there are many long citations and many pictures, maps and summaries, and the further readings at the end of the chapters are well selected with good and short commentary. An Introduction to Human Geography:Issues for the 21st Century is an issue-oriented introductory human geography textbook. It is written by twenty-one human geographers, with many good maps, plates and spotlights and case studies. It is like a companion, because of the depth of the chapters, the textbook can be read after the course and be used by related courses, such as ‘World Regional Geography’ or a course devoted to ‘Issues in Human Geography’. The major sections focus on the important issues facing the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but they are also related to major sub-disciplines in human geography.
There are many good qualities in the two British textbooks from which we can learn a lot (to update regularly, to be based on research publications, to use material with different presentation style, to make index, to make comments on further readings, to stick to the academic norms) and make our similar textbooks more compatible with the counterparts in North America and the UK.
2009, Vol. 24 
