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Title details for This Land Is Our Land by Ken Ilgunas - Available

This Land Is Our Land

How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back

by Ken Ilgunas
Andrew Eiden
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Private property is everywhere. Almost anywhere you walk in the United States, you will spot “No Trespassing” and “Private Property” signs on trees and fence posts. In America, there are more than a billion acres of grassland pasture, cropland, and forest, and miles and miles of coastlines that are mostly closed off to the public. Meanwhile, America’s public lands are threatened by extremist groups and right-wing think tanks who call for our public lands to be sold to the highest bidder and closed off to everyone else. If these groups get their way, public property may become private, precious green spaces may be developed, and the common good may be sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy few.
Ken Ilgunas, lifelong traveler, hitchhiker, and roamer, takes readers back to the nineteenth century, when Americans were allowed to journey undisturbed across the country. Today, though, America finds itself as an outlier in the Western world as a number of European countries have created sophisticated legal systems that protect landowners and give citizens generous roaming rights to their countries' green spaces.
 
Inspired by the United States' history of roaming, and taking guidance from present-day Europe, Ilgunas calls into question our entrenched understanding of private property and provocatively proposes something unheard of: opening up American private property for public recreation. He imagines a future in which folks everywhere will have the right to walk safely, explore freely, and roam boldly—from California to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 10, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780525532422
      • File size: 182515 KB
      • Duration: 06:20:14

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Andrew Eiden gives this utopian audiobook a focused and remarkably convincing reading. Eiden's tone is spot-on, and his reading is thoughtful overall. He lets listeners immerse themselves in a work that celebrates walking and promotes the idea that trespassing is as American as property rights. The author's mission is to tear down the notion that "good fences make good neighbors," replacing it with a new ethic of open walkable places without boundaries. Ken Ilgunas argues that "the right to roam" should be encouraged and our landscapes should be open to anyone who wants to wander there. While the proposals in this short audiobook may not be embraced for decades--if ever--the ideas are worth listening to. And the narration is excellent. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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