Barry Wood – författare

Originally published in 1994, Urban Land and Property Markets in the United Kingdom, adopts a perspective that encompasses the distinctive nature of the legal framework, land law, property market and procedures of Scotland, England and Wales. The book provides detailed accounts of the structure of property, planning and tax law governing urban land and property markets, registration procedures and transactions charges, market processes and how they all work in practice. The book is based on a report commissioned by the German Federal Government as part of a five-country study completed in 1991.

Originally published in 1994, Urban Land and Property Markets in the United Kingdom, adopts a perspective that encompasses the distinctive nature of the legal framework, land law, property market and procedures of Scotland, England and Wales. The book provides detailed accounts of the structure of property, planning and tax law governing urban land and property markets, registration procedures and transactions charges, market processes and how they all work in practice. The book is based on a report commissioned by the German Federal Government as part of a five-country study completed in 1991.

Invented History, Fabricated Power begins with an examination of prehistoric beliefs (in spirits, souls, mana, orenda) that provided personal explanation and power through ritual and shamanism among tribal peoples. On this foundation, spiritual power evolved into various kinds of divine sanction for kings and emperors (Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese and Japanese). As kingships expanded into empires, fictional histories and millennia-long genealogies developed that portrayed imperial superiority and greatness. Supernatural events and miracles were attached to religious founders (Hebrew, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic). A unique variation developed in the Roman Church which fabricated papal power through forgeries in the first millennium CE and the later “doctrine of discovery” which authorized European domination and conquest around the world during the Age of Exploration. Elaborate fabrications continued with epic histories and literary cycles from the Persians, Ethiopians, Franks, British, Portuguese, and Iroquois Indians. Both Marxists and Nazis created doctrinal texts which passed for economic or political explanations but were in fact self-aggrandizing narratives that eventually collapsed. The book ends with the idealistic goals of the current liberal democratic way of life, pointing to its limitations as a sustaining narrative, along with numerous problems threatening its viability over the long term.