Land is something many of us take for granted. It's here, under our feet, grounding us and giving us a sense of home. But as Simon Winchester (The Map That Changed the World) elucidates in his comprehensive new book, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, it's actually a precarious, ever-changing reality that has been stolen, purchased, defended and damaged by human activities.

Weaving together elements of history, geography, geology and science, Winchester paints a raw, in-depth picture of the land that encircles our glorious planet, which is in crisis due to the looming effects of human-induced climate change. He touches on a vast number of topics that have impacted the land since the dawn of civilization, dividing the book into sections that focus on borders, ownership, stewardship, war and restoration.

For example, in terms of land's borders, things aren't always what they appear to be. The "longest undefended border in the world," over 5,000 miles between the U.S. and Canada, isn't really undefended since there is "an array of unseen and unseeable electronic gadgetry" that guards the U.S. Other borders have been the cause of great pain and suffering, such as the Radcliffe Line drawn by British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe in 1947, fracturing India and Pakistan.

Land has also played a big role in cultural clashes, and Winchester does not mince words as he describes such social injustices as the horrendous treatment of Native Americans by Europeans. These injustices include land theft, cruel policies like "Indian removal" and the infamous westward passage known as the Trail of Tears. 

But Winchester also discusses plenty of positive and beneficial ventures related to land, such as the huge task of mapping and sizing the world, as well as amazing engineering projects such as the Zuiderzee Works in the Netherlands, one of the most impressive hydraulic engineering projects on Earth. Ultimately Land is a truthful, revealing exposé, paying tribute to the territory we all share.

Land: whether meadow, marsh, or mountain, we live on it and are sustained by it, and we can trust the author of distinctively focused New York Times best-selling titles like The Professor and the Madman to consider how it has shaped us. Here, Winchester looks at how we buy and use land, how we spill blood over it, and, finally, whether we can really talk about who owns it.

The land, and how we divide, demarcate, and economize it, has a history and culture of its own. Accomplished writer Winchester (Krakatoa; The Map That Changed the World) furthers his work on humans and their interaction with the land in this wide-ranging account. He begins with a discussion about a patch of land he purchased in Dutchess County, NY, using this strip of earth as a stepping-stone into the concept of land ownership and the broader concept of human interaction with geography. While the land seems solid and immutable, it has changed dramatically over geologic time. The occupants of the land have also changed: Native Americans lived in the New York area for thousands of years, followed by Dutch and then English settlers. Winchester also points out that map boundaries are extremely political, illustrating stark divisions such as the independence and subsequent break between Catholic Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1921. Land itself is a topic of great concern. Colonizers of foreign lands often do not understand the local ecology, as when British settlers in Australia dismissed the Aboriginal practice of controlled underbrush fires, leading to devastating fires today. Winchester also points out that land is at risk, including a discussion on rising sea levels. VERDICT Winchester's large audience will enjoy this well-worded, interdisciplinary look into the relationship between humans and the land.—Jeffrey Meyer, Iowa Wesleyan Univ.

Winchester (The Perfectionists) probes "humankind's approach to the possession of the world's surface" in this eclectic account. Using his purchase of 123 forested acres in New York's Berkshire Mountains as a launching point, Winchester explores the geological history of the planet (he notes that New England formed one billion years ago in the Southern Hemisphere) and the legal, cultural, and social issues related to land use and ownership. He details the decades-long creation of Flevoland, a province in the Netherlands built entirely on land reclaimed from the North Sea, attributing Dutch communalism and consensus-driven policymaking to the fact that much of the country is below sea level. Winchester also details debates over indigenous land rights in America and Australia, and notes that Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock, whose daughter, Gina Rinehart, is now the world's largest private landowner with 29 million acres under her control, once suggested that unemployed aboriginal Australians should be sterilized. Winchester amasses a wealth of intriguing factoids and arcana, though readers looking for a comprehensive overview of the subject will be disappointed. Still, this is an entertaining and erudite roundup of humanity's ever-evolving relationship with terra firma. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME (Jan.)