LAND How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

British author/narrator Simon Winchester's Queen's English, familiarity with his material, and passion for his subject matter make this a winning choice. Also, his rhythm is perfect for this audiobook's numerous digressions. LAND provides listeners with a new way of looking at an old phenomenon: how humans turned the earth's surface into a proprietary patchwork of boundaries, title holdings, and commons. We learn how Europeans dispossessed the land of Native peoples, how one woman came to own 29 million acres of mineral-rich soil, how the invention of barbed wire changed the way land is bounded, and how land can be mismanaged. Alternately fascinating and concerning, this work explains how humans "tamed" and then claimed the land, first for survival and then for profit. R.W.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2021]