Who Owns the World: The Surprising Truth About Every Piece of Land on the Planet by Kevin Cahill this book through an extensive list attempts to describe who owns what, how much it's worth, what it's used for and what if any legal protections exist for keeping it. Naturally this takes a lot of tables and numbers. The data is framed in a rather odd way. He argues that land ownership is a human right. As his own data demonstrates however, not that many countries throughout history have agreed with him. There's also a tendency to get hung up on technical accuracy as opposed to reality. For instance, the queen does own all of Canada's land but, as a property lawyer explained to me the only time the Crown takes advantage of this is if you don't pay your taxes. I can't speak to the accuracy of the numbers. He does point out where numbers conflict. There is no bibliography or notes as such but he does describe where he gets the data. I think you could look most of it up online if you wanted to.
Recommended for the wealth of information on almost every country in the world.
Note:This book was provided through Librarything's early reviewer Program.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
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2 comments:
I've always thought is was funny (in a mirthless kind of way) that Exxon owns more land than a lot of small countries. So, does the author describe land-owning corporations in detail?
For each U.S. State he talks about the largest landowners including corporations. For countries he'll sometimes mention the corporation. Frequently they are oil or forestry companies.
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