Reading time: 2 minutes
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: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World 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?
“In many ways, Land combines bits and pieces of many of Winchester’s previous books into a satisfying, globe-trotting whole. . . . Winchester is, once again, a consummate guide.”
Boston Globe
Spend some time with Simon Winchester, and you will sail oceans, survive earthquakes, peer into volcanoes, pore over maps, mine the origins of language and measure the immeasurable world… Yet “Land” is more than a travelogue or popular history or geographic exploration — it is a political work, a chronicle of human efforts to possess, restrict, exploit and improve our lands, all while, ideally, not destroying them.
Washington Post
The intricate vocabulary used to talk about land is one of the many pleasures … The theme could not be more topical … It packs in a wealth of ideas and human drama – and gives a fresh view of centuries of social conflict seen through a geographer’s lens
Financial Times
Winchester’s curious mind and wonderfully conversational way with words make reading a chapter or three a day akin to enrolling in an adult-education course with a gifted older teacher who has boundless stories with which to inform and entertain.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World – Book
By Simon Winchester 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…
Only 3 left in stock
Articles you may also like
‘Cheese-eating surrender monkeys’? It’s time to give the French Army the credit it deserves
When marking the centenary of the terrible events of 1917, some of the most devastating of World War I, it is perhaps understandable that the British have focused their attention on the Passchendaele offensive and the Americans on their entry into the war against Germany. Unfortunately, their desire to commemorate the heroism of their own service personnel often […]
How War with Spain Created the Dutch Colonial Empire
The Dutch colonial empire was a large collection of territories that spanned the globe from the Americas to Asia. It held together for about 400 hundred years and made its mother country a fortune, wealth that persists today. What was the reason that the Netherlands, a tiny country with very few natural resources, was able […]
The horse bit and bridle kicked off ancient empires – a new giant dataset tracks the societal factors that drove military technology
Reading time: 7 minutes
Starting around 3,000 years ago, a wave of innovation began to sweep through human societies around the globe. For the next millennium the continued emergence of new technologies had a dramatic effect on the course of human history.
