As usual, Simon Winchester has made an immensely complicated subject—land ownership around the world through history—eminently readable and even comprehensible. How does he do this?! His book proceeds thematically, but also somewhat chronologically. He juggles all the aspects of land—how hunter-gatherers subsisted on the land; the emergence of agriculture, followed by enclosure, followed by conquest and the exploitation and subjugation that went along with it. He acknowledges the seeming logic of ownership—because it’s a commodity that “they’re not making anymore”—while suggesting that indigenous people around the world know better than to count on territory as something that even can be owned. Along the way he tells some fascinating stories: the Domesday Book and how it laid the foundation for the British monarchy; the Oklahoma land rush (and the many Trails of Tears that went before it); the enclosure movement and how it scattered Scots to North America; among many others. Winchester is particularly interested in communal ownership of land and its potential to reverse the abuses of individual ownership, yet he is not naive about it. He catalogs communalism from the incredibly destructive Stalinist takeover of Ukraine in the 1930s, the Scottish return of Hebrides Islands to social experiments and American land trusts today. A thoroughly absorbing book that made me wish he would tackle water next.