{"product_id":"owning-the-earth-the-transforming-history-of-land-ownership-9781620402894","title":"Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership","description":"\u003cp\u003eBarely two centuries ago  most of the worlds 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 landownership 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 seventeenth 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 mankinds place on the planet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45279689179189,"sku":"ByrdShop_1620402890","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781620402894.jpg?v=1780606509","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/owning-the-earth-the-transforming-history-of-land-ownership-9781620402894","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}