Explores the concept of land ownership and how it has shaped history, examining how people fight over, steward, and occasionally share land, and what humanity's proprietary relationship with land means for the future.

Explores the concept of land ownership and how it has shaped history, examining how people fight over, steward, and occasionally share land, and what humanity's proprietary relationship with land means for the future.

Land, whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city, is central to 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 human beings are doing, and have done, with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of the planet.

Land--whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city--is central to our existence. 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.