... engrossing.

Winchester is good at...adding dashes of drama, narrative, indignation and, above all, connection to disparate historical accounts. He does the same with the brutal dispossession of native populations in North America.

Winchester is a master at capturing the Old World wonder and romance of exploits like Struve’s.

... not a polemic, as much as one might sometimes wish it were. Like a lot of journalists-turned-historians, Winchester is a quick study, and there is an astounding amount of information in Land, much of it revealing, although it can also feel somewhat random. As he roams his seemingly boundless terrain, Winchester provides us with set piece after set piece. And yet, despite the epic continents-and-centuries scale he tries to take on, his approach at its best is often miniaturist, as it has been with perhaps greater success in some of his previous books.

This book is meant to be wandering and bird’s-eyed; not a comprehensive treatment but an impressionist view, a history-by-milestone method.

The intricate vocabulary used to talk about land is one of the many pleasures of Land.

... informative and thought-provoking.

Weaving together elements of history, geography, geology and science, Winchester paints a raw, in-depth picture of the land that encircles our glorious planet, which is in crisis due to the looming effects of human-induced climate change. He touches on a vast number of topics that have impacted the land since the dawn of civilization, dividing the book into sections that focus on borders, ownership, stewardship, war and restoration.

... a meticulous study.

Land...utterly fails to deliver.

... a lively curiosity and a lively prose style.

Winchester, whose rigorously organized mind seems able to codify and categorize any human endeavor into sustained good reading, could easily have hopped from continent to continent, country to country, exploring each region’s land relationships through the perfectly legitimate lenses of history, geology, governance, resources, economies and as many other parameters as made sense. And he does all these things, but not in a predictable textbook fashion..

Winchester's large audience will enjoy this well-worded, interdisciplinary look into the relationship between humans and the land..

... a dizzying journey into land ownership, theft, mapping, exploration, conflict, pollution, overdevelopment, and, in the final pages, the increasing land loss now underway due to rising sea levels. Winchester sweeps through history, name drops with abandon, and does his best to make writing about it all look effortless. The problem is not of the size of the subject but his insistence on addressing so much of it.

The latest sweeping, satisfying popular history from the British American author and journalist.

Winchester amasses a wealth of intriguing factoids and arcana, though readers looking for a comprehensive overview of the subject will be disappointed. Still, this is an entertaining and erudite roundup of humanity’s ever-evolving relationship with terra firma..