Book excerpt: First published in 1968, this book explores the theme of geographical generalization, or model building. It is composed of seven of the chapters from the original Models in Geography, published in 1967. The first chapter broadly outlines this theme and examines the nature and function of generalized statements, ranging from conceptual models to scale models, in a geographical context. The following six chapters deal with socio-economic building in geography. They focus on demographic and sociological models as well as looking at special aspects of models in human geography in reference to economic development, urban geography and settlement location, industrial location, and agricultural activity. This book represents a robustly anti-idiographic statement of modern work in one of the major branches of geography.