SLIDE MOUNTAIN

Taking his title from a Mark Twain satire, Steinberg teases from the parched earth of property law a nifty morality tale about the notion of ``owning'' nature. The urge to own a piece of the pie goes back to time immemorial, but advanced capitalism has brought it to ludicrous new heights. By turns farceur and parabolist, Steinberg (History/New Jersey Institute of Technology) serves up five of the more egregious examples of the need to own: Blackbird Bend, once in Nebraska and now in Iowa, where speculators sought to profit from a shifting river channel, pilfering Native American treaty lands in the process; the bayou country of Louisiana, where the speed of the flow determines who can profit from the oil nestled under the waterscape (hint: it's not the Creoles); Arizona's precious aquifers, where pricey deep wells suck the water table dry, with ruination not just for the driller, but for the neighbors as well; Fulton County, Pa., where cloud seeding threatened to tilt the playing field in favor of some farmers over others; and air rights (real estate losing its attachment to the earth), in which political clout (read money) allows you to steal sunlight from those living in the shadow of your skyscraper. Steinberg's fascination with the minutiae of the legal process can feel like fistfuls of sand being flung in your eyes, but for the most part, the language is brightened by a wit that relishes incongruities and lambastes greed, arrogance, and narcissism. ``Put simply,'' he writes, ``property law evolved in a way that helped turn more and more of the planet into less and less, benefiting fewer and fewer.'' In the culture of property, the spirit of law is the domination of nature and everything has a price tag. Steinberg gives bite to that old refrain—the rich get richer, the poor poorer, and the courts smooth the way. (Photos, not seen)