Owning the Earth - The Transforming History of Land Ownership (Andro Linklater, 2013)

In the end I didn't find this very useful.  The author simply is trying to do too much - there's no way he can be expert about all of the subjects covered.  Also suspect because he is pretty open about his policy orientation - while I of course prefer openness, in this case it supports the impression that the author is applying policy preferences as gap-fillers as he comments on just about everything under the sun.

The author tells us that the genesis of the book is his effort to explain the financial "crisis" circa 2008 - as he looked for explanations he kept coming back to the importance of land ownership - then the arc of the book changed and he indicates that he wrote a different book than intended.

It's certainly not startling to assert that land ownership policies are important.  He tries to address the topic across the globe and across the centuries, inevitably supplemented by observations about social and political systems - to repeat, there's just no way he can be sufficiently knowledgeable to knit all these pieces together.

So I read pretty closely for a hundred pages or so - and there are plenty of interesting ideas floating around.  Government policy matters immensely, but it needs to take into account local history, etc.  Nothing startling here.

Reminded me of Dierdre McCloskey in describing why there was nothing inevitable about the economic progress of northern Europe (including England), though he comes from a different ideological perspective.  China, Middle East - examples of areas more advanced than Europe, but failed to advance.

Seems to adopt the standard narrative on lots of issues . . .  The Road to Serfdom tellingly described as a "savage hymn"; also throws in some standard-issue CEO bashing (not sure how it fit the story line, but then again he did start from 2008 perspective - of course with no mention that government policy might have had a role).  The selfishness and greed memes become tiresome.

Interesting discussion comparing serfs (eastern Europe) and peasants (western Europe) with analogous discussions regarding other geographies.  I'd like to come back to this part of the discussion.