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  • Owning the Earth

  • The Transforming History of Land Ownership
  • By: Andro Linklater
  • Narrated by: J. Paul Guimont
  • Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)
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Owning the Earth cover art

Owning the Earth

By: Andro Linklater
Narrated by: J. Paul Guimont
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Summary

From the author of the acclaimed Measuring America, a dazzling chronicle, through history and across cultures, about how the ability to own the land we inhabit has shaped modern society. Barely two centuries ago, most of the world's productive land still belonged either communally to traditional societies or to the higher powers of monarch or church. But that pattern, and the ways of life that went with it, were consigned to history by, Andro Linklater persuasively argues, the most creative and at the same time destructive cultural force in the modern era - the idea of individual, exclusive ownership of land.

Spreading from both shores of the north Atlantic, it laid waste to traditional communal civilizations, displacing entire peoples from their homelands, but at the same time brought into being a unique concept of individual freedom and a distinct form of representative government and democratic institutions. By contrast, as Linklater demonstrates, other great civilizations, in Russia, China, and the Islamic world, evolved very different structures of land ownership and thus very different forms of government and social responsibility.

The history and evolution of land ownership is a fascinating chronicle in the history of civilization, offering unexpected insights about how various forms of democracy and capitalism developed, as well as a revealing analysis of a future where the Earth must sustain nine billion lives. Seen through the eyes of remarkable individuals - Chinese emperors; German peasants; the 17th century English surveyor William Petty, who first saw the connection between private property and free-market capitalism; the American radical Wolf Ladejinsky, whose land redistribution in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea after WWII made possible the emergence of Asian tiger economies - Owning the Earth presents a radically new view of mankind's place on the planet.

©2013 Andro Linklater (P)2014 Audible Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

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Horrible Narrator

I want to read the book but the narrator's voice is awful, sounds computer generated by a very cheap program.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Rich, complex+utterly brilliant bit of scholarshp

If books could take the breath away (which they can't) this would be a breathtaker. You'll need an academic-ish mind to fully appreciate its glories, as it's rich/heavy in scholarly references. But in terms of its scope and ambition, it really is something quite special with a balanced but nevertheless visionary argument threaded through. All in all, a wonderful parting gift from Andro Linklater, my new intellectual hero.

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