''Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World'' is a 2021 book by

Simon Winchester Simon Winchester (born 28 September 1944) is a British-American author and journalist. In his career at ''The Guardian'' newspaper, Winchester covered numerous significant events, including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. Winchester has ...

Content

The book details different conceptions of

land ownership In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...

and the history of land ownership. It also discusses conflicts stemming from disagreements over land.

Reception

Critical reception

Francisco Cantú's review in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' was mixed, praising Winchester's prose. However, Cantú noted a nostalgic tone that at times undercut the depictions of land appropriation and violence. Writing for the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', Aaron Retica criticized the book for not " omingtogether" due to its lack of an identifiable thesis. In the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

'', Delphine Strauss did identify a thesis to the book: that most disputes are fundamentally about land. Literary review aggregator

Book Marks Literary Hub is a daily literary website that launched in 2015 by Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin, American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, and Electric Literature founder Andy Hunter. Conten ...

noted that reviews of the book were mostly "Positive".

References

External links

Interview with Winchester on ''Land'', February 17, 2021

C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...

2021 non-fiction books HarperCollins books Books about economic history Books about social history Land tenure English-language books {{hist-book-stub