By listening to the stories these borders have to tell, we can learn how political identities are shaped, why the world's boundaries look the way they do--and what they tell us about our world and ourselves. From the very first maps in Egypt to the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilization, from the profound shift in meaning of the Mason-Dixon line to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, and from the dark consequences of Detroit's city limits to the intriguing reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy, this is a singular look at human history--told through its most spellbinding border stories.