Review by Booklist Review
Nonfiction star Winchester (The Perfectionists, 2018) tackles an enormous topic, writing about nothing less than all of the land in the world. Starting with his own purchase of some acreage in Connecticut about 20 years ago, he takes readers on a dizzying journey into land ownership, theft, mapping, exploration, conflict, pollution, overdevelopment, and, in the final pages, the increasing land loss now underway due to rising sea levels. Winchester sweeps through history, name drops with abandon, and does his best to make writing about it all look effortless. The problem is not of the size of the subject but his insistence on addressing so much of it. Readers learn of the problematic results of the artificial India-Pakistan border, the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, the incarceration of Japanese Americans, battles in Belfast, threats from Russia, radioactive contamination in Colorado, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on and on. Expect elegant sentences, intriguing profiles (although sorely lacking in women), and a genial narrator who wanders wherever his curiosity takes him. Be prepared for a very wide-ranging ride.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Winchester (The Perfectionists) probes "humankind's approach to the possession of the world's surface" in this eclectic account. Using his purchase of 123 forested acres in New York's Berkshire Mountains as a launching point, Winchester explores the geological history of the planet (he notes that New England formed one billion years ago in the Southern Hemisphere) and the legal, cultural, and social issues related to land use and ownership. He details the decades-long creation of Flevoland, a province in the Netherlands built entirely on land reclaimed from the North Sea, attributing Dutch communalism and consensus-driven policymaking to the fact that much of the country is below sea level. Winchester also details debates over indigenous land rights in America and Australia, and notes that Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock, whose daughter, Gina Rinehart, is now the world's largest private landowner with 29 million acres under her control, once suggested that unemployed aboriginal Australians should be sterilized. Winchester amasses a wealth of intriguing factoids and arcana, though readers looking for a comprehensive overview of the subject will be disappointed. Still, this is an entertaining and erudite roundup of humanity's ever-evolving relationship with terra firma. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
The land, and how we divide, demarcate, and economize it, has a history and culture of its own. Accomplished writer Winchester (Krakatoa; The Map That Changed the World) furthers his work on humans and their interaction with the land in this wide-ranging account. He begins with a discussion about a patch of land he purchased in Dutchess County, NY, using this strip of earth as a stepping-stone into the concept of land ownership and the broader concept of human interaction with geography. While the land seems solid and immutable, it has changed dramatically over geologic time. The occupants of the land have also changed: Native Americans lived in the New York area for thousands of years, followed by Dutch and then English settlers. Winchester also points out that map boundaries are extremely political, illustrating stark divisions such as the independence and subsequent break between Catholic Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1921. Land itself is a topic of great concern. Colonizers of foreign lands often do not understand the local ecology, as when British settlers in Australia dismissed the Aboriginal practice of controlled underbrush fires, leading to devastating fires today. Winchester also points out that land is at risk, including a discussion on rising sea levels. VERDICT Winchester's large audience will enjoy this well-worded, interdisciplinary look into the relationship between humans and the land.--Jeffrey Meyer, Iowa Wesleyan Univ.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The latest sweeping, satisfying popular history from the British American author and journalist, this time covering a topic that many of us take for granted. Having bought 123 acres north of New York City, Winchester muses on what land ownership means. At the most basic level, it means that "you have the right to call the police to throw anyone else off what the title documents say belongs to you." Bronze Age farmers began the process of defining boundaries, but human ingenuity, technology, and avarice produced increasingly accurate markers, surveys, and maps that delineated national borders, a matter of obsessive concern to governments around the world. Winchester delivers a riveting history of mapmaking, which culminated over the past few centuries as heroic surveyors trudged with their instruments thousands of miles to produce charts that were both beautiful and dazzlingly precise. (For a particularly illuminating example, see Winchester's The Map That Changed the World.) For most of history, human yearning for land outstripped that for money, and the author offers familiar, disheartening accounts of mass acquisitions and theft: Native America (and Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) to Whites, Arab Palestine to Jewish immigrants, Africa to European powers. Readers looking for inspiration will perk up to read about the Netherlands, which acquired its land from the sea and didn't evict anyone. Although less well known than tech billionaires, America's land billionaires are prospering, increasing their holdings by 50% since 2007. In fact, the top 100 own land equal to the size of Florida. With some exceptions, they are strangers to public spirit and sometimes fiercely opposed to anyone setting foot on even their wilderness property. The chapters on the Stalin-ordered mass famine in Ukraine and the shameful World War II imprisonment of Japanese Americans (and confiscation of their property) make for painful reading but important historical reminders. The author also discusses climate change and the land that continues to disappear as rising temperatures melt the ice caps. Engaging revelations about land and property, often discouraging but never dull. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
