Book Review/Giveaway/CLOSED: Who Owns the World By Kevin Cahill with Rob McMahon

Hachette  impresses me so much with their widely varied book catalog- you just never know what is gonna pop up next for review!


In Who Owns the World,  Kevin Cahill with Rob McMahon present 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.)--see more on that below
--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 here's some more interesting tidbits that I learned and was most interested in:
- Queen Elizabeth OWNS privately ALL the land in the entire United Kingdom (which includes the islands south of us AND Canada). Yes I said ALL. The land can basically be leased from her (known as Freehold, no limit) or rented from her (known as leasehold, with stated years involved). THIS is why GB is ran WITHOUT a written constitution. if they had one (like us) they'd have to give citizens RIGHTS, and then they could fight this fuedal system.
SO, they may have a government run health system and the dole, but they can NOT own the land they live on outright- it reverts to the crown at their death or the end of the terms, which ever comes first. And if you're thinking of the royal families with the exhaustive estate taxes- well, THAT is on property and possession, and percieved value, than ACTUAL land ownership). Stunned? I was!


-America is the THIRD largest land country behind Russia and Canada, yet our only 20% of our population has a landstake (owns land). In fact if you averaged the land available, it would equal 8.2 acres PER person in America available. Now I am quite willing to forgo 7 acres to the National Parks service, and keep the 1.2 I already own, so that sorta works for me!


- For my state, Louisiana, there is technically 7.4 acres per person, making our state technically about the same size of Greece. No wonder we all love the Greek Festival so much.HA. The feds own 3.8% of the land, while the state itself owns a large chunk as well, they can;t get any reliable figures. it's Louisiana folks, they probably don't really know for sure themselves! But it's probably close to double the feds!


There are also chapters devoted to which INDIVIUALS own the most land here in the US and worldwide, as well as how land is owned by religions.


In all, the book was much more interesting than I thought it would be! I'm defintely keeping this one around for a weird but handy reference! I can see where it will be hand for history and geography reports by my soon to be in school daughter!

If you home school, this would be a valuable resource-AND they've even made a quiz up, so you could have a test on it! Check it out here and there's more info on the book here!


And now my lucky readers you can try to win your OWN copy, so you can wow your friends with weird tidbits they didn't know and shock them into realizing how lucky we are here!

Giveaway:

Hachette is offering THREE of my readers free copies of this fun book!

Entries:

Make sure I have an email address, with your comment, 

so I can contact you, if you win! 

If I don't have a way to contact you, you will forfeit your win!

Requirements: must be resident of US, NO PO BOXES (sorry, Hachette’s rule)

4 day winner's rule : Winner has 4 days to acknowledge they won prize and confirm address, if no contact, then new winner will be picked in their place.

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Contest will end on February 7th, at midnight. Winner will be picked by Random Number (random.org) on February 8th, and emailed. As soon as winners’ info is received from winners, I will notify my rep at Hachette and they will have the books mailed out!

Disclosure: I received a review copy from  Hachette Publishing free of charge, for me to review. I was NOT told how to review the products.