**⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | A Visionary Blueprint for a Sustainable Future**

*Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos* is an exceptional and visionary book that presents a compelling case for addressing poverty and climate change together. The author offers innovative solutions and actionable strategies that are both practical and inspiring. With a focus on systemic change and community empowerment, the book provides a hopeful roadmap for creating a more equitable and sustainable world. Its thorough research and clear, persuasive writing make it a must-read for anyone passionate about social justice and environmental sustainability.

A book about the intersection of poverty and climate? Please sign me up! Except that was only such a small portion of this book. Yes, it was informative about many movements to help Black and other marginalized communities with home ownership and a connection to the land, but that wasn't the book I thought I was getting. I expected a discussion about how marginalized communities suffer from increased levels of cancers and other diseases because their communities are placed closer to toxic hazards, get less attention for the maintenance of schools, parks, roads, etc. Climate was not even mentioned until about 80% of the way through the book and then it was another 10% before the intersection between climate and marginalized communities was mentioned. Yes, I enjoyed discussions about community gardens and green spaces. Those are needed but that wasn't why I picked up this book.

Thank you, Netgalley and St Martin's Press for this advanced reader's copy. This was a was fascinating look at how we use and abuse our land. There were parts of this book I absolutely loved, the parts when the author spoke about housing and that all housing shouldn't be for profit. Housing should be a human right. I currently live in one of the most expensive cities in the US and there needs to be AFFORDABLE HOUSING created in ALL CITIES if they want to help with homeless and poverty. There are places with rent control, and they need to be maintained appropriately (and not just for the rich to hoard). I also loved the author's chapter on how Eisenhower providing protections to keep our national land free and wild can benefit the earth with climate change by not mining and building on ALL of our land, keeps beautiful rolling fields, and also benefits our country with tourism.

Based on the title FREE THE LAND: The Root Cause of Inequality and the Fight for a Better Future, I naively hoped Audrea Lim’s latest work would simplify the multiple problems of land ownership with its toxic social and environmental effects.
Instead, she lays bare an incredibly complex legal, political and social quagmire, a terrain in which no one solution fits all cases.

This is a challenging book to read, both because the issues and history Lim tries to assimilate into a full picture are so complex, but also because it is discouraging to see how often well-meaning solutions flounder at cross purposes.

America, writes Lim, “is synonymous with private property,” as is consistent with our core social value individualism. This relationship with the land goes way back historically and runs counter to indigenous belief systems. The challenge now is how to “decommodify” the land, delink it sufficiently from profit, to solve problems in the environment along with climate change and major social justice concerns.

The above comments are inadequate to address the book’s value or its difficulty. I often found myself barely holding on until the tedium of historical explanations would give way to some narrative anecdotes. Lim did deliver as she traveled to the site of many experiments, interviewed innovators and opponents, and provided personal insights. To understand complex subjects often requires processing complex information, and there’s no way around that.

As a general reader, I’m not in a position to referee any facts, but I frequently found her accounts eye-opening, as well as disturbing. But also, and this is the best part, I was often encouraged to see how many people are diligently searching for solutions, and achieving incremental success. And, as a further testament to the book’s worth, I was moved to look up several of the organizations Lim referenced and am trying to decide where to offer further support.

With thanks to St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.