This collection of 20 essays examines the merits of land-value taxation and distinguishes it from the conventional property tax because it has a more benign economic influence. It includes four essays by William S. Vickrey, the 1996 Nobel laureate in economics.

Henry George's political economy has been hailed as one of the great contributions of American social criticism. His writings have, however, invited interpretation in contradictory fashion. Commentaries have used him to uphold laissez-faire social Darwinism allowing for the aggrandizement of money. Some on the left have regarded his ideology as calling for a co-operative commonwealth well beyond the intentions of the single-tax mechanism. And there are those who see him as having, in effect, written a new Declaration of Independence as powerful as that of 1776. Bringing to light his previously unavailable British writings would clear up some misunderstandings and also present the man and his ideas in a fresher historical context.

The American political economist Henry George devoted his life to the single tax. Virtually forgotten today, his best seller "Progress and Poverty" influenced numerous people in the English-speaking world. His fame and fall were due to a temporary alliance with the American Irish Catholics who were agitating for the land war in Ireland and social change in their new homeland. So significant was this tidal wave of support that it swamped the American consciousness in the late 1870s and early 1880s including prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, some of whom were conservatively inclined. George astutely navigated the waters by working with the radical editor of "The Irish World", Patrick Ford. But then George made a politically awkward friendship with Father Edward McGlynn, an ardent supporter of modernism and the single tax, who was a constant irritant to the church hierarchy and subsequently excommunicated. The issues that McGlynn raised rocked the American Catholic Church and the Vatican itself. The counter-campaign waged by the church and devout Irish Catholics blocked McGlynn and put an end to George's fleeting success.

Our homage to freedom is a mockery, for the blinding glare of riches and power have made of democracy an illusion. The consequence is life without social and economic justice and a false view-we are chained to monetary acquisitiveness, group identities, and other limited perspectives. Power and influence coupled with technology, bureaucracy, and greed have masked accumulated wisdom-the bedrock of individual integrity. Even social injustice masked as property rights takes on a look of integrity, liberty, and prosperity.

At the root of our problems is the relation of man to the land and his mental and physical separation from it. The most endurable structure would be built upon the Fatherhood of God, which the ancient Hebrews perceived as requiring the sharing among the entire people of the divine gift of land. While land rent has been acknowledged to be socially created, a theft by private interests of natural resources that belong to mankind in common, is protected and exalted as the fruit of effort and a basis of personal rights.

"The First Definitive History of Land Economics" stands in a tradition of social criticism that recognizes that land-rent income should be the tax base of the community and the means to eliminate poverty. The author hopes to do something towards overcoming a way of thinking that in the guise of defending property rights defends privilege in its robbery of Nature, labor, and life.

Our homage to freedom is a mockery, for the blinding glare of riches and power have made of democracy an illusion. The consequence is life without social and economic justice and a false view-we are chained to monetary acquisitiveness, group identities, and other limited perspectives. Power and influence coupled with technology, bureaucracy, and greed have masked accumulated wisdom-the bedrock of individual integrity. Even social injustice masked as property rights takes on a look of integrity, liberty, and prosperity. At the root of our problems is the relation of man to the land and his mental and physical separation from it. The most endurable structure would be built upon the Fatherhood of God, which the ancient Hebrews perceived as requiring the sharing among the entire people of the divine gift of land. While land rent has been acknowledged to be socially created, a theft by private interests of natural resources that belong to mankind in common, is protected and exalted as the fruit of effort and a basis of personal rights. social criticism that recognizes that land-rent income should be the tax base of the community and the means to eliminate poverty. The author hopes to do something towards overcoming a way of thinking that in the guise of defending property rights defends privilege in its robbery of Nature, labor, and life.