Book Review
Title: Land
Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper
Date: January 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0062938336
Simon Winchester’s new book Land is aptly titled because it is so general in its study of land. The story moves from measuring the size of the earth, to mapping the earth, to differing concepts of land among diverse peoples, to some very odd border situations, to the creation of new land in the Netherlands, to the loss of land due to climate change, to the shifting legal status of land in many countries, to “Wilding” efforts, to who owns the most land today, among many other subthemes. Winchester explores shifting laws and attitudes about land in all corners of the globe, mediæval to contemporary.
The book achieves coherence by looking the many historical, social, and political developments via the lens of how it affects land or how land influenced those developments. It is a land-centric view of cultures past and present.
Measuring the planet is one of Winchester’s first topics. Friedrich Wilhelm Georg von Struve spent forty years measuring the size of the earth. He was fortunate when Tsar Nicholas I came to power, who was an engineer by trade before ascending to the throne. Nicholas believed in the project and provided Struve with unlimited financing to obtain the best equipment in the world, and the staff he needed to assist as he traveled across, and measured, the earth. Struve’s measurements proved very accurate—40,008,696 meters compared with NASA’s measurement of 40,007, 017 meters using satellites.
Another aspect of land is borders. The oldest extant official border in the world Andorra’s. A Minnesota border around Angle Inlet (population 123) is an odd border. Access requires driving into Canada, then circling back to re-enter the US from above and enter Angle Inlet. Winchester offers several odd border situations.
The Netherlands gets the prize for most land added by humans to the planet (1.2 million acres). Look up the Zuider Zee works, brainchild of engineer Cornelis Lely, to see how one of the official Wonders of the World provided a major expansion to the nation’s landmass. On the opposite side, the book discusses land being gradually lost due to a rising sea level, with several examples.
Winchester explores land being essentially taken from people in Scotland due to legal changes such as “enclosures” and “clearances,” at the same time when huge amounts of land were being given away to anyone who would work it in the western US. Many of those losing land in Scotland came to the US to seize the opportunity.
The book briefly looks at the largest landowners in the world, and how they use the vast resource. The book illustrates the contrasting property laws among different nations, and how many are experimenting with returning land to nature, in a wide variety of different ways.
The book discusses many other land-related fascinating facts and phenomena—too many to summarize in this review. I wholeheartedly recommend Winchester’s Land story to anyone interested in any aspect of history, as land plays a rôle in so much of it.