The drive to own the natural world in twentieth-century America seems virtually limitless. Signs of this national penchant for possessing nature are everywhere - from suburban picket fences to postings in the wilderness that read "Keep Out - Private Property" to elaborate schemes to own underground water, clouds, airspace, even the ocean floor.Yet, as Theodore Steinberg demonstrates in this compelling, often humorous look at Americans' attempts to master the environment, nature continually turns these efforts into folly. In a rich narrative style recalling the work of John McPhee and Bill McKibben, Steinberg takes us on a tour of the American landscape as he explores some of the more unusual dilemmas that have arisen in our struggle to possess nature.Beginning on the banks of the Missouri River Steinberg recounts the battle for three thousand acres of land the water carved from a Nebraska Indian reservation and deposited in Iowa. Then he travels to the heart of bayou country, where an army of lawyers butted heads over whether Six Mile Lake was actually a lake or a stream. Moving on to Arizona, Steinberg investigates who, if anybody, owned the fossil water below the Sonoran desert, and in Pennsylvania's Blue Ridge Mountains he retells the story of a group of dirt farmers who laid claim to the clouds. His final stop is congested New York City, where real estate mogul Donald Trump, among others, waged a famous battle for rights to the air.The American obsession with owning nature was immortalized by Mark Twain in the tale of Slide Mountain, a landslide-prone Nevada peak that symbolizes nature's unwillingness to be possessed. In the story, one ranch slips down on top of another, precipitating a mock trial where a judge tries to decide who now owns the buried property. By relating these modern-day "Slide Mountain" stories, Steinberg illuminates the sometimes absurd provisions of American property law and examines what it means to live in a society where the natural world has been everywhere relentlessly turned into real estate. Read Less