Review 210: Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This latest book by Simon Winchester attempts to cover a broad subject, perhaps too broad, for human’s relationship with land. While there are many facts and tidbits gleaned in this book, it is not long enough to cover the world entirely. Huge parts of land are missing, notably South America, most islands, much of Asia and Europe. He focuses instead on points here and there, he narrows in and those parts I thoroughly enjoyed. One that struck me particularly is with the Netherlands, creating new land  and their building of new land in the 1980s, by taking it away from the North Sea away, creating a new province of Flevoland. 

I found the book was well organized, yet each section could have more breath. Also, once could argue there was no rhyme or reason to why certain points on the map were covered and other areas skipped. When confronted with native people’s being disposed of their land, and the attempts to recover it, well definitely Winchester could have written more, and perhaps with more compassion. He certainly seems to take affront at how much land is owned by so few in Britain, and rightly so. 

Don’t expect the book to be through, but there is much here that can have you asking, just how much land does one need?

Thanks to Harper and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

 I listened to the audio book which was narrated by the author. Narration was fine.