The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset

How the world’s oldest asset secretly shapes our modern economy

In The Land Trap, Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the modern world. From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China's real estate crisis today, Bird shows how fortunes are built—and destroyed—on the bedrock of land.

Tracing three centuries of history, Bird explores how land quietly became the linchpin of the global banking system, drivin...