Mine!

Not as ground breaking as the reviews suggested. Sets out the issues clearly for the neophyte. But as lawyers looks at how it is much more than how you might get to what it should be. Not a freakajurisprudence.

As a former student of Professor Heller, I would have thought I knew everything presented in the book. And only after finishing it did I realize that instant gratification had led me to purchase the book on Amazon, in a format where I don't actually 'own' the book. I paid a premium for this privilege and obtained fewer rights to the material than purchasing through minethebook.com, which would have aided both myself and the authors.My experience/laziness shows the importance of this book - where the hidden rules of ownership are constantly subtly influencing our lives. While Heller and Salzman do an excellent job detailing this everywhere, the most notable portions are when they layout the enormous sale of what should be "our" property rights/assets to Big Business/Big Tech and monied interests through copyright changes and spendthrift trusts.Aside from this, the book serves as an excellent primer to property law for anyone interested in law or law students. As one of my smarter classmates remarked, "property law is pretty much a bunch of judges trying to fix a leaking dam with scotch tape," and both authors do a great job of illustrating this.

This book is a lot like learning the high-level themes of Professor Heller's 1L property class without having to read all of the cases (it even covers the Rule Against Perpetuities). That is to say, it's entertaining and eye-opening.Most of us think in binary terms about ownership: I own this or I don't, and there's a "right" answer; if I own it, that means I have all the rights of ownership and can do whatever I want with it. Well, this book explains the jarring reality that those beliefs are rarely true. The book goes through tons of timely and interesting examples showing that rather than binary concepts, the fact of ownership depends on what narrative justifying ownership we favor, and the rights of ownership operate along a gradient rather than an all-or-nothing approach.The last chapter sets out a short but really fascinating speculation as to what might happen as "ownership" digitizes and converges into fewer and fewer hands (think: what if Disney+ creates new versions of Star Wars every year and erases everything else from the historical record).Definitely a recommend---quick, easy, and fun read with lots to think about.

This book would have been a 5-star book if the authors didn't get so lost in each analogy/example. Don't get me wrong...there were some great ones...such as the one I flesh out in my own words below...“A 2020 USA today poll with 3,000 respondents ended up with half saying “if the chair can recline, I’m reclining” and the other half “no just don’t do it”.You hear examples all the time recently, thanks to airlines in recent years cutting down on space between chairs to make room for more seats, about these conflicts. Where A wants to decline their chair and B (a tall person) wants their legroom.So who’s right?Well A will claim that her armrest button reclines her seat…the edge of reclining space, therefore, belongs to the front seat. This claim of attachment it’s mine because it’s attached to something that’s mine is one of the oldest justifications of owning something dating back thousands of years.• It’s a maxim coined in medieval England that says “whoever owns the soil, owns up to heaven and down to hell” or as we put it in America….to space and down to the depths of the earth.This is what enables landowners here in Texas to extract underground oil and gas and people to fly drones in their airspace.But if we at (B) (B) will argue that hey I sat here and took ownership of my seat and space before you reclined…so it’s mine…first come first serve.Conclusion: So as you can see...the examples are in-depth and well thought out. But the issue is that, mainly in later chapters, the authors focus more on said example than the ultimate principle you're supposed to get out of the chapter. But yeah overall this was a great book that I would recommend if you're interested in getting a "primer" of sorts on Ownership law and the "hidden rules that encompass it. This book is informative, entertaining, and full of creative imagery. The only down-side is that you'll read a few chapters that get boring...and kinda go on and on to where you forget what the point of the chapter you're reading even is. The best part about this book is the 6 maximums it provides.

I loved this book. Heard it's already on a bunch of Top 10 Books lists like Forbes etc and I'm not surprised. The authors are insightful and sometimes funny and the stories and concepts in the book are accessible and intelligent. I feel like my eyes have been opened about all the stuff I own, and especially about all the stuff that I THOUGHT I owned but now I know I don't! I bought a second copy for my brother who is a lawyer and he loves it too. Buy this book!