Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth—a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this brief, powerful, timely, and hopeful book, Jedediah Purdy explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other.
Jedediah Purdy is a professor at Columbia Law School. His books include After Nature, A Tolerable Anarchy, Being America, and For Common Things. Twitter @JedediahSPurdy
"A profound meditation for our heedless era."—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
“A soulful work. . . . Purdy believes that reckoning with climate change demands a deeper and more comprehensive overhaul of our infrastructure, and This Land Is Our Land is an invitation to imagine the new world—and the new society—that this overhaul could produce.”—Eric Klinenberg, New York Review of Books
“[A reminder] of just how capable human beings are of remaking the world, when it suits them.”—Rachel Riederer, New Yorker
“A book to read now and to think from. . . . A call to action.”—Aaron Bady, The Nation
"This Land Is Our Land is a short book of great power by an exceptional writer and thinker. Challenging, dismaying, rigorous, inspiring, this is an urgent and important work about nature, land, and people for our Anthropocene moment."—Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey