Home : Book details : Book description

Description of  Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

The author of The Professor and the Madman and The Perfectionists explores the notion of property our proprietary relationship with the land through human history, how it has shaped us and what it will mean for our future. Land whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing and have done with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet. Land: The Ownership of Everywhere examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: who actually owns the world's land and why does it matter?