Overview

From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us-and how it could unite usToday, 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, one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other.From the coalfields of Appalachia and the tobacco fields of the Carolinas to the public lands of the West, Purdy shows how the land has always united and divided Americans, holding us in common projects and fates but also separating us into insiders and outsiders, owners and dependents, workers and bosses. Expropriated from Native Americans and transformed by slave labor, the same land that represents a history of racism and exploitation could, in the face of environmental catastrophe, bind us together in relationships of reciprocity and mutual responsibility.This may seem idealistic in our polarized time, but we are at a historical fork in the road, and if we do not make efforts now to move toward a commonwealth, Purdy warns, environmental and political pressures will create harsher and crueler conflicts-between citizens, between countries, and between humans and the rest of the world.

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9780691195643

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Reviews

This is a Thoreauvian call to wake up, to take up the long-forgotten work of building a 'world-renewing ecological commonwealth,' forging alliances across all that keeps us apart, but that must hold us together if we are to survive the twenty-first century. Don't just read this book-think with it. -Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life This is a pragmatic, bracing, and beautiful book about the inextricable connections between ecological health and human justice. Purdy's diagnosis is as persuasive as his call for new kinds of solidarity in pursuit of economic and environmental equality. -Jane Bennett, author of Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things Showcasing the ideas of one of our finest writers, political commentators, and environmental law scholars, this is a wonderful book filled with insight. -Katrina Forrester, Harvard University Purdy has established himself as one of the most capacious, thoughtful, and timely writers to confront the great crises of the Anthropocene. I hope this book of gentle provocations finds its way into the hands of all those dreaming of a freer, greener, more just world. -Daegan Miller, author of This Radical Land

Showcasing the ideas of one of our finest writers, political commentators, and environmental law scholars, this is a wonderful book filled with insight. --Katrina Forrester, Harvard University Purdy has established himself as one of the most capacious, thoughtful, and timely writers to confront the great crises of the Anthropocene. I hope this book of gentle provocations finds its way into the hands of all those dreaming of a freer, greener, more just world. --Daegan Miller, author of This Radical Land

[A reminder] of just how capable human beings are of remaking the world, when it suits them. ---Rachel Riederer, New Yorker A soulful work of political theory. . . . 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 work of analytical and moral clarity. ---Greg Grandin, This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth . . . is . . . about how to live together once we've accepted that there is nothing more natural than living in society with other human beings, in a world in which politics and ecology have come to be one and the same. It's a book to read now and to think from. It's a call to action. ---Aaron Bady, The Nation

Purdy has established himself as one of the most capacious, thoughtful, and timely writers to confront the great crises of the Anthropocene. I hope this book of gentle provocations finds its way into the hands of all those dreaming of a freer, greener, more just world. aEURO Daegan Miller, author of This Radical Land

Author Information

Jedediah Purdy is professor of law at Columbia Law School. His previous books include After Nature, A Tolerable Anarchy, Being America, and For Common Things. He contributes to the New Yorker, the Nation, the New Republic, the Atlantic, n+1, and other magazines. He lives in New York City. Twitter @JedediahSPurdy

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