
Land Power
Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies
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Narrated by:
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Braden Wright
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By:
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Michael Albertus
About this listen
An award-winning political scientist shows that a society’s path to prosperity, sustainability, and equality depends on who owns the land
For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land Power, political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment.
Modern history has been defined by land reallocation on a massive scale. From the 1500s on, European colonial powers and new nation-states shifted indigenous lands into the hands of settlers. The 1900s brought new waves of land appropriation, from Soviet and Maoist collectivization to initiatives turning large estates over to family farmers. The shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land. Drawing on a career’s worth of original research and on-the-ground fieldwork, Albertus shows that choices about who owns the land have locked in poverty, sexism, racism, and climate crisis—and that what we do with the land today can change our collective fate.
Global in scope, Land Power argues that saving civilization must begin with the earth under our feet.
©2025 Michael Albertus (P)2025 Basic BooksCritic reviews
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Excellent! Extraordinary and should be a must read
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Albertus has produced a scattered book with - at once - unconnected and overlapping tale of the dispossession of American Indians in California, Blacks in South Africa, Aboriginals in Australia, women in South America. That their story needs to be told is fine. But must it told with such little insight. Just damn facts arranged in sentences?
The book is a complete waste of time. Please don’t bother with it
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