BOOK REVIEW
Wherever you go , there you are ( And probably on someone else ’ s property )
By Terri Schlichenmeyer Syndicated Book Reviewer
These days , you are very well-grounded . Yep , two feet firmly planted on terra-firma and it ’ s all yours . Corner to corner , front to back , you ’ re a landowner , caretaker of lawn and loam , holder of an estate of some small measure . It ’ s the American dream , and in “ Land ” by Simon Winchester , find out why we yearn for a few hundred yards of dirt .
Up until relatively recently in history , humans blithely went where they were going with nary a thought about who might feel possessive of the sod on which they trod . The idea that someone might lay claim to the land was absurd ; no , it was a wide-open world , and it belonged to everybody .
Back then , the Earth looked quite different than it did now , says Winchester . Islands came and went . Shores extended out farther . There was more flora and fauna , no concrete or condos , no problems until white European explorers arrived in North America and decided that the people who ’ d lived here for millennia really needed to go . For their model , the explorers looked back home : Great Britain and Europe had been held in ownership by someone for generations .
But before land could be held completely , everyone needed to know its boundaries and borders , whether local or national , and that meant knowing the size of the planet itself . Land had to be platted and mapped as precisely as possible and governments had to be ready to defend its perimeters ; even island residents needed to know where their maritime edges lay . Judging by peculiarities in boundary-making , some of that official measurement , Winchester guesses , was done with the help of an adult beverage .
Land can erode . It can be created by moving other land or even trash . It can be improved and destroyed , seized , sold , shared , stockpiled , struggled on , surrounded by fence , and stolen from people who ’ ve lived on it for centuries . And if we leave it be , says Winchester , it might just save itself . Conventional wisdom says that one should invest in land because it ’ s the only thing that lasts , the only thing that stays put , but author Simon Winchester shows how that ’ s not entirely true now , if it ever was . The one thing that can be stated , and proven inside “ Land ,” is that things are ... well , complicated .
We humans have made it so throughout history , sometimes necessarily and sometimes , as Winchester suggests , not . That ’ s just one of the surprises inside this book ; another is the extensive history behind the acquisition of large tracts of land , the decision-making that went into territories and town limits , and the defending of both . Readers will also delight in , and be astounded by , the Swedish idea of a hike unencumbered by property lines but governed by hemfridzon , and the Finnish attitude toward “ No Trespassing ” signs .
In the end , as Winchester points out , most of us wind up in a plot of land six feet by three feet , six feet under . Long before you get to that , though , you should read this book because “ Land ” is rock-solid .
“ Land : How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World ” by Simon Winchester , 464 pages , c . 2021 , Harper $ 29.99 .
• Terri Schlichenmeyer of The Bookworm Sez is a self-syndicated book review columnist . Schlichenmeyer ’ s reviews include adult and children books of every genre . You may contact her at bookwormsez @ yahoo . com
28 • TIMELESS MERIDIAN