Land Power

“Land Power is a fascinating book on the power of land inequality in history and the large land reshufflings of the past and present. It is a must-read to think about the coming struggles over land in the 21st century.”

“Land Power is an important book dealing with a timeless but underappreciated issue: who owns the land. It illuminates how social hierarchies and injustice have been historically built around unfair land rights and provides a fascinating array of examples of how reshuffling land can help tackle these pressing issues.”

“With a sweeping scope across history and around the world, Albertus offers his readers a novel view on the rise of the modern world. Land—who controls it, who owns it, who works it, and efforts to alter all this—sits at the basis of social power and political power in the modern world.” 

“Land has always been a source of economic wealth. This captivating book demonstrates that it has also been a fountainhead of political and social power, profoundly shaping the organization and political structures of many societies.”

“‘Land’—Four simple letters. Four enormous impacts: on racial divides, gender inequality, the struggle for development, and our precarious environment. In this powerful and compelling book, Michael Albertus re-invents how to think about that most simple but profound force shaping our lives—the ground beneath us.”

“A vigorously argued account of how patterns of landholding shape and are shaped by political power. Global in scope, Land Power is lively, well-informed, and highly illuminating.”

“Magisterial, accessible, and compelling, Land Power vaults across time and geography to provide an extraordinarily learned account of the role of landed power in displacement, inequities, and exploitation. Spanning from 10,000 BC through a nineteenth century cascade of land reallocations and into a dramatically transformed future, it reveals that the rise of the dispossessed is rarely a guarantee of justice for all, but the advent of a new set of winners and losers.”

“Now more than ever it's essential to talk about land use with the widest lens possible. Land Power offers new insights into how public and private initiatives worldwide can effectively safeguard ecosystems and societies for future generations of all life.”