FT Business Book of the Year

Best business books

All the books longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

The Land Trap by Mike Bird

The Land Trap

This is the book for anyone who wants to see beyond markets and money to the hidden game being played on a foundation as old as civilization itself. Timely, provocative, and essential, The Land Trap will change how you see the ground beneath your feet. — Penguin Random House

Categories
Economics, 
History

Synopsis

In The Land Trap, Mike Bird — The Economist’s Wall Street editor — pulls back the curtain on how this ancient asset exerts outsize influence over the modern world. With masterful insight into global finance, Bird reveals how land has quietly become the linchpin of the world’s banking system, affecting everything from soaring housing prices to geopolitical tensions. From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China’s modern-day real estate crisis, Bird shows how fortunes are built — or destroyed — all on the bedrock of land.