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Who Owns the World: The Surprising Truth About Every Piece of Land on the Planet |  | Author: Kevin Cahill
Creator: Rob McMahon
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 430695
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0446581216
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.3
EAN: 9780446581219
ASIN: 0446581216
Publication Date: January 29, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
You don't have to be a student of geography or cartography to have an interest in the world around you, especially with globalization making our planet seem smaller than ever. Now you can IM someone in Alaska, purchase coffee beans from Timor-Leste, and visit Dubai. But what do we really know about these lands?
WHO OWNS THE WORLD presents the results of the first-ever landownership survey of all 197 states and 66 territories of the world, and reveals facts both startling and eye-opening. You'll learn that:
--Only 15% of the world's population lays claim to landownership, and that landownership in too few hands is probably the single greatest cause of poverty.
--Queen Elizabeth II owns 1/6 of the entire land surface on earth (nearly 3 times the size of the U.S.).
--The Lichtenstein royal family is wealthier than the Grimaldis of Monaco.
--80% of the American population is crammed in urban areas.
--The least crowded state is Alaska, with 670 acres per person. The most crowded is New Jersey, with .7 acres per person. --60% of America's population are property owners. That's behind the UK (69% homeownership).
--And much, much more!
With its relevance to contemporary issues and culture, WHO OWNS THE WORLD makes for fascinating reading. Both entertaining and educational, it provides cocktail party conversation for years to come and is guaranteed to change the way you view the U.S. and the world.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Deserves Less than One Star August 16, 2010
R. R. Lunn (Bismarck, ND USA)
I bought this book because I like statistics. However, After the first two items I looked at the data was so glaringly off-base I returned the book. Just one example: The capitol of South Dakota is Pierre. The book states the population of Pierre is 50,000! That is over 3 times the actual population (14,000+). This was consistent (if you want to call it that)with other similar data. If this data which is so easily obtainable is so far off, how can one even come close to trusting any of the data. I suggest the author stay within his limits: Engand!
 Covering the relationship between landownership and poverty May 17, 2010
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
WHO OWNS THE WORLD THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT EVERY PIECE OF LAND ON THE PLANET is a 'must' for any general lending library, covering the relationship between landownership and poverty and providing the results of the first landownership survey of all every territory and country in the world. Real estate figures and facts cover a range of cultural and modern issues and provide a different way of viewing land ownership and real state.
Who owns the world March 10, 2010
April A. Renn (Henderson, NC)
THE SURVIVORS CLUB BY BEN SHERWOOD is a nonfiction. It gives some insight into how to survive some of life's most challenging events. It is an interesting book if you enjoy this type of reading. As for this reader is was okay. 3.5 This book was received for review.
The statistics were interesting February 22, 2010
Debbie (Alpena, AR United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Who Owns the World" was mainly a statistical reference book, though definitely one with an agenda behind it. I found the actual statistics very interesting. I've heard things like "China is terribly crowded" but now I know how it compares to other countries in terms of population in urban areas versus rural areas and so on.
I wasn't very impressed with Part One, which was only 52 pages long. The author's premise was that poverty can be wiped out if everyone in the world was given ownership of even a small piece of land. He then shows how rich people (who, ironically, made their riches from ideas and businesses) own a lot of land. The problem is that not every piece of land is created equal. Giving someone a remote bit of wasteland wouldn't be helpful. Not to mention that I've known a millionaire who owned an old house on a small bit of urban property (as in, he didn't own a lot of land), poor people (including farmers) who owned land, and poor people who inherited land and sold it for quick money (which they promptly wasted) or had to sell it due to debts. Land ownership doesn't automatically lead to riches.
Another problem I had with Part One was that he tended to compare apples to oranges to pears. I realize the difficulty he had in getting precise numbers, and I appreciate that he did usually state what, precisely, he was including in his numbers. However, he had a whole section comparing monarchs to each other with some numbers being what the monarch owned privately plus what the government owned "in their name," others with only government-owned lands credited to them, and others credited with all of the land they ruled over whether they technically own it or not. The various religions were also compared as to total wealth (based on the value of the land containing churches, religious hospitals, etc.) irregardless of the religions different administrative structures. A religion can't own land, only people, so I didn't get what the comparison was supposed to prove.
I found Part Two very interesting though I was still occasionally exasperated by comments the author made. (For example, he says land in America is too expensive, then lists the sale prices of the most expensive mansions in the USA to 'prove' his point. Um, land is pretty cheap. Even land with a house can be reasonable. We don't all have to own lavish mansions, you know.)
Part Two covered the statistics on United States in detail, state by state, and then gave the statistics for each country in the world. The statistics for the states included: population, population of the capital, size in acres, acres per person, number of houses, houses owned, houses rented, and acres of developed land. The statistics for countries included: population, size in acres, population, acres per person, GNI, World Bank ranking, and percentage urban population. It also gave the background history and how the state/country is owned (including urban vs farmland vs forestland statistics for the USA states) in a text description. It would have been helpful to have some graphs for each state or country to put everything in perspective, but the information was still interesting.
The book was easy to read. If you like statistical comparison books and are interested in this topic, then you'll probably enjoy this book.
This book was a free review copy sent to me by the publisher.
Reviewed by Debbie from Different Time Different Place Book Reviews
(differenttimedifferentplace. blogspot. com)
 Divvying Up the World February 9, 2010
Patrick Shepherd (San Jose, CA USA)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful
The premise for this work is good: of all the world's land surface, who really owns all the various bits of it? Clearly land ownership is not equitably distributed; some own much more than others. This book presents reams of statistics about land ownership in just about every country and territory in the world, and most of these numbers have been well researched and are as good a set of numbers as you are likely to see, given that some countries have almost zero real data collection processes about these matters, and many more are in such a state of inner turmoil that determining who 'owns' what is a frustrating and near-meaningless endeavor.
But this book is marred by a major flaw, that of trying to impose the author's particular feelings on how land ownership should be dealt with, rather than investigating the reasons and history of how it is currently set up, and just how the world economies are very dependent on such distribution. In the first chapter, the author continuously points out that there is plenty of land for everybody, several acres for every man, woman, and child on the planet, and that if only such a equal distribution could be achieved, all the worlds troubles would go away. While it is certainly true that many of the world's wars have been over ownership of particular pieces of land, what this author misses are several facts:
1. Large portions of the world's surface, while technically marginally habitable, in reality will not support any type of heavy-density human presence. Areas such as the Australian outback, the huge Artic tundra areas, large tracts of land around and in the Sahara desert, the many heavily mountainous regions of the world should all be subtracted from the available land area that is available for divvying up amongst the world's population. There are very good reasons why so much of the world's population is concentrated in relative small areas of the planet, but this book does not delve into those reasons.
2. Many areas of the world can be farmed, but the most efficient, greatest yield-producing methods for many of these areas cannot be done in small plots, but rather require large tracts that lend themselves to mechanized farming methods, or have so little vegetation that their only viable use is grazing land at many acres per cow.
3. The best pieces of land are relatively small in comparison to all the rest, and like any item in short supply, there is strong competition for such pieces. Once someone has managed to gain control of such areas, they will normally do all they can to maintain that control. As the author presents no concrete plan for just how his 'equitable' distribution of land could be achieved, his harping about just how much of the world is controlled by so few comes across as a very irritating whine.
This same author viewpoint leads him to make some claims, that while they are 'technically' true, are absurd on their face, such as the claim that Queen Elizabeth II personally holds close to a sixth of world's land. Most of this is actually claimed by the British Crown, not the Queen personally, and if the Crown ever tried to actually invoke that claim (such as all of Australia) and kick all the current inhabitants out, there would be instant and massive opposition. Of much more interest was the author's detailing of what the Queen actually holds in her own name (not the Crown's), and this list is quite impressive, truly showing her to actually be one of largest landholders in the world. If all of this book had been like this one area, it would have truly been a very useful and enlightening look at who really owns the world. As it is, the only really useful items here are the statistics he has compiled on all the various countries listing area, population, and general form of land ownership, as this data is not easily findable all collected in one place.
Note also that this is not a book for casual reading; other than the first chapter the balance is composed of data listings for each country (or, for the US, each state) followed by a short half page set of tidbits about the area, some of which, while interesting, have nothing to do with land ownership.
Recommended only for statistical use.
---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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