Land

Bestselling author Simon Winchester’s history of humanity’s use and abuse of land is both inspiring and heartbreaking. He illuminates how land has served as a catalyst for humankind’s greatest achievements, tragedies and atrocities. Winchester, an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), traces the myriad ways people engage with land: revering it, buying and selling it, stealing it, dividing it, fighting over it and – in recent times – striving to preserve it.

Land Ownership

Many ancient societies believed that the Earth’s surface belongs to a deity or several deities and that all people share its use. Individual ownership of land most likely arose about 4,000 years ago as people stopped living as nomadic hunter-gatherers.