This Land Is Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back

by Ken Ilgunas Narrated by Andrew Eiden

Overview

Private property is everywhere. Almost anywhere you walk in the United States, you will spot “No Trespassing” and “Private Property” signs on trees and fence posts. In America, there are more than a billion acres of grassland pasture, cropland, and forest, and miles and miles of coastlines that are mostly closed off to the public. Meanwhile, America's public lands are threatened by extremist groups and right-wing think tanks who call for our public lands to be sold to the highest bidder and closed off to everyone else. If these groups get their way, public property may become private, precious green spaces may be developed, and the common good may be sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy few.

Ken Ilgunas, lifelong traveler, hitchhiker, and roamer, takes readers back to the nineteenth century, when Americans were allowed to journey undisturbed across the country. Today, though, America finds itself as an outlier in the Western world as a number of European countries have created sophisticated legal systems that protect landowners and give citizens generous roaming rights to their countries' green spaces.
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Inspired by the United States' history of roaming, and taking guidance from present-day Europe, Ilgunas calls into question our entrenched understanding of private property and provocatively proposes something unheard of: opening up American private property for public recreation. He imagines a future in which folks everywhere will have the right to walk safely, explore freely, and roam boldly-from California to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters.

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Andrew Eiden gives this utopian audiobook a focused and remarkably convincing reading. Eiden’s tone is spot-on, and his reading is thoughtful overall. He lets listeners immerse themselves in a work that celebrates walking and promotes the idea that trespassing is as American as property rights. The author’s mission is to tear down the notion that “good fences make good neighbors,” replacing it with a new ethic of open walkable places without boundaries. Ken Ilgunas argues that “the right to roam” should be encouraged and our landscapes should be open to anyone who wants to wander there. While the proposals in this short audiobook may not be embraced for decades—if ever—the ideas are worth listening to. And the narration is excellent. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

There’s nothing much uglier than a ‘No Trespassing’ sign—and in much of the world you don’t see them, because people have the right to ramble across the land. In this unique and powerful volume, Ken Ilgunas explains why Americans are fenced in, and how we could change that sad state of affairs!” —Bill McKibben, author Radio Free Vermont

"Ilgunas returns...with a heavily researched, passionate argument about the need for America to emulate many other countries and allow its citizens to roam across the land, public as well as private. Earnest, thoughtful, and alarming in places—an optimistic work that urges America toward a profound cultural shift." —Kirkus Reviews

"Ken Ilgunas earned a following with his 2013 Walden on Wheels, and thank goodness he's back with This Land Is Our Land: part polemic, part American travelogue, and part primer on the history of land use laws... Before Americans need a membership card to get outside, everyone who moves should read this book." —Adventure Journal

"At a time when the federal government is expanding corporations’ access to public land, for activities such as logging and oil exploration, Mr. Ilgunas makes a contrary argument, that we should ease the public’s access to private land, for recreational pursuits such as hiking and swimming." —The Wall Street Journal 

"Nonetheless, this little book offers much food for thought. Ilgunas may be a dreamer, utopian in his thinking, yet the examples he cites of people in other nations recognizing a right to roam make me think some form of this might not be beyond the pale in the United States." —National Parks Traveler

“Ken Ilgunas’ argument goes against the grain of this fearful time. As physical freedom for children and adults constricts, as the radius of freedom around our homes diminishes to the front stoop, our other freedoms diminish, too. So does our sense of community and our democracy, which require us to go outside, wander through our neighborhoods and beyond, into the woods and fields, and know the people and the nature of things around us. Tragically, as we withdraw indoors out of fear of strangers, our abandonment of our neighborhoods and natural areas makes them less safe. Following the example of enlightened laws in other countries, America needs new legislation guaranteeing the right to roam—which is the right to know and find meaning in what lies beyond.” —Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principle and Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“A brilliant and timely book! The right to walk America—the right to roam—won't solve every problem but it will make us healthier, more fit, more civil, more sociable, more aware, smarter, more connected and alive. Woody Guthrie had it right this is our land, so let's reaffirm our right and get moving.” —David W. Orr, author of Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward

“How wonderfully refreshing to have a skilled writer like Ken Ilgunas shake us from our daily distractions and invite us to look to the horizon, to the beautiful lands around us and to a future in which we enjoy them more fully. With Ilgunas leading us along an idea that first sounds radical if not misguided becomes, step by step, more workable and appealing. Who knows, he just might be right: we can both respect private property and vastly expand access to the lands we all call home.” —Eric Freyfogle, author of On Private Property and Our Oldest Task

“This Land Is Our Land is a gift—a vision of how Americans can establish a new relationship with their land and with each other.  Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, Ilgunas’ book raises profound questions about exclusion in the American landscape and points the way to a more inclusive future.” —John Lovett, Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola University

“Outdoor enthusiasts will enjoy this book.” —Booklist

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Andrew Eiden gives this utopian audiobook a focused and remarkably convincing reading. Eiden’s tone is spot-on, and his reading is thoughtful overall. He lets listeners immerse themselves in a work that celebrates walking and promotes the idea that trespassing is as American as property rights. The author’s mission is to tear down the notion that “good fences make good neighbors,” replacing it with a new ethic of open walkable places without boundaries. Ken Ilgunas argues that “the right to roam” should be encouraged and our landscapes should be open to anyone who wants to wander there. While the proposals in this short audiobook may not be embraced for decades—if ever—the ideas are worth listening to. And the narration is excellent. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-02-06
Woody Guthrie was singing a truth that we've allowed to sicken and nearly die; it's time to nurse it back to health.An assiduous roamer and backcountry ranger, Ilgunas (Trespassing Across America: One Man's Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland, 2016, etc.) returns with a heavily researched, passionate argument about the need for America to emulate many other countries and allow its citizens to roam across the land, public as well as private. He asserts that roaming was long a part of the American way of life, but we have lost the way. He offers some disturbing statistical evidence—e.g., how few people own most of the private land and how our national parks and monuments are overflowing with visitors. He also notes how our sedentary lifestyle is affecting our health—and our national budget—and he continually reminds us how much better it is elsewhere for roamers; Scotland and Sweden are among his most frequent examples. Ilgunas populates the text with iconic literary and cultural figures who believed in roaming, from Plato to Rousseau to Thoreau. The author also knows the counterarguments to "free roaming"—e.g., lawsuits against landowners, litter, armed roamers—and he devotes a significant section of the narrative to answering, if not refuting, them all. In a final chapter devoted to how we might accomplish his dream, the author cites the works and words of legal authorities, and he appeals to our better selves—an approach that, unfortunately, does not often bear fruit. "Let's not be so fixated on something as small as individual liberty," he writes, "…when we should be thinking about something far grander and far nobler: the health of the community, the health of the planet, the prosperity of the human race and all our fellow species."Earnest, thoughtful, and alarming in places—an optimistic work that urges America toward a profound cultural shift.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171850838
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
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Excerpted from "This Land Is Our Land"
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Copyright © 2018 Ken Ilgunas.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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