The Only Thing in the World That Lasts

This book sets out to tell us the story (or stories) of land - why it has meaning and value, what rules people have drawn up over time about its use and ownership, how much of it there is, how it's been mapped, how it’s been lived upon, divided, stewarded, stolen, exploited & restored, and fought over. It’s a sizable topic that Simon Winchester tackles here. He does a good job of laying out all of the things that might come to mind when thinking of “land” and then wrapping stories around them.

Winchester starts with the story of his own land. Toward the end of the last century Winchester purchased “123¼ acres of forested and rocky mountainside, located in the hamlet of Wassaic, in the village of Amenia, the town of Dover, the county of Dutchess, in the state of New York.” He is the first person in his family to own title to land, leaving aside his father’s “postage stamp” sized land back in the UK, purchased in retirement, where a humble cottage stood.

The Duchess County land that Winchester owns was originally peopled by Native Americans, most recently the Mohicans and Schaghticoke. Dutch settlers came next, followed by English, and then Americans - immigrants from Germany and Italy among them. The land was divided and subdivided and brought back together again over time. Its inhabitants held it in various types of ownership - from no particular sense of “owning” land right up to today’s deeded property with all the rights associated with that.

From his own land Winchester moves on to stories from, predominantly, the United States and the former British Empire. Winchester is a British American and he grounds this book in British ideas and rules about land. He tells stories of the UK origins of some of today’s notions around the ownership and use of land. Whether those are definitively THE origins, or simply the traditional British origins Winchester doesn’t distinguish. It does become a bit heavy handed at times. Reading this book, you might get the impression that the plow was invented in the British Isles, rather than in the Fertile Crescent, which is typically given as its birthplace.

That’s not to say that Winchester is comfortable with, or a proponent of, the rules and traditions he writes about. He’s dedicated the book to the Indian Chief Standing Bear, saying “In 1879 the U.S. government declared this Ponca chief to be a “person” under the law. But they still took away his lands.” His sympathy for the common usage of land comes clearly through, whether it's in the story of allowing deer hunters on his own land in New York, or stories of aboriginal peoples and their traditional land use methods, or stories around the system of lordly landholdings and “commons” that predominated in feudal Britain and has lasted almost to this day.

The hardcover edition is 464 pages including glossary, bibliography and index. Despite that length and Winchester’s thoroughness and erudition, I’m afraid in the end the book is not the overarching essay on “Land” that you would expect from the ambitious title and subtitle. It is though, for the most part, an engaging set of stories.

I listened to the audiobook. If you are interested in tackling this book, I think audio may be the way to go. You get a stronger sense of the Britishness of these ideas about land from listening to the author’s accent and intonations as he narrates. And he just has a voice that you could listen to for hours.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: Comprehensive, engaging and enlightening, though the stories covered are a bit hit or miss. The subtitle - “How the hunger for ownership shaped the modern world” gave expectations that the book did not fulfill. I found no discourse tying the stories back to the “hunger for ownership”. Nor is there an overarching argument why the shape of the modern world is either good or bad because of it, though which side the author comes down on that question comes through in the stories he chooses to tell. In the end the book is a collection of stories rather than a comprehensive essay.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I purchased a copy of the hardcover edition of this book, but I am traveling right now, and that copy is still on the bookshelf at home. So, I decided to listen to the audiobook downloaded from my Everand subscription. After listening I think that may have been preferable to reading a paper copy, with the caveat that the paper editions have photos and maps missing from the audio experience.