The War Over Rent
How Irish Tenants Fought Their Landlords and Won
Unable to add items
Sorry, we're unable to add the item because your cart is already full.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Failed to remove from Wish List.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Unable to follow podcast
Unable to unfollow podcast
Listen to an unlimited selection of audiobooks, Audible Original creations & podcasts, and children's stories.
Receive 1 credit per month to exchange for the title of your choice - that title belongs to you.
The War Over Rent
Pre-order Now for €17.99
-
Narrated by:
-
By:
-
Jo Guldi
The War Over Rent is a sweeping story of the groundbreaking struggle between the Irish and the British that transformed how we view housing today. After more than a decade of research, Jo Guldi draws on previously unused archival material, including an extraordinary range of maps, historical surveys, and court records, to unearth stories of ordinary citizens doing extraordinary work.
From evicted tenants to journalists, insurgents to judges, and politicians to statisticians, the Irish united to protest perpetually escalating rent. The movement experimented with every available weapon: high-stakes assassinations, secret societies, dynamite plots. But ultimately, nonviolent activism—including rent strikes, investigative journalism, parliamentary politics, and grassroots data analysis—allowed them to find previously inconceivable success. The 1881 Irish Land Act became the world’s first modern rent-control law, offering a model for land redistribution and mortgage programs that still echoes around the world.
The forgotten experiments of these early data activists raise the question: How can we harness data as an instrument for democratic revolution today? And in the face of global housing crises and growing wealth disparity, is there a way to repeat the success of the Land War? One part gripping, under-told history, one part recipe for agitation, The War Over Rent is breathtaking in its implications.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Reviews
"I met Guldi in 2010, when we were both junior scholars in the Harvard Society of Fellows. A burst of ideas and energy, her natural talent was evident in every conversation we had. In the years since, I have followed her work closely, as our research areas overlap. A prolific, pioneering historian, I endorse her work with all of my enthusiasm—and, frankly, in awe."
—Matthew Desmond, New York Times bestselling author of Evicted and winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"A great book on a real and under-reported history: how Irish peasants fought against British landlords, made housing a public question, and contributed to the collapse of the imperial property regime. A must read.”
—Thomas Piketty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Equality
“Under British colonialism, Ireland was a laboratory for some of the most violent experiments in modern economics. It's also where uprisings against them yielded lessons that continue to matter today. There's no better way to learn them than through Jo Guldi's captivating storytelling. She shows how Irish peasants became data activists, making counter-surveys, counting evictions, mapping rent. They used every technology of media and persuasion available to them to force the powerful to concede. Their invention - the rent strike, born as the literal alternative to killing landlords - traveled from Ireland to Gandhi's India to the American civil rights movement. In a world where housing is again unaffordable, this magnificent book recovers a history that landlords would prefer we forget.”
—Raj Patel, New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing
—Matthew Desmond, New York Times bestselling author of Evicted and winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"A great book on a real and under-reported history: how Irish peasants fought against British landlords, made housing a public question, and contributed to the collapse of the imperial property regime. A must read.”
—Thomas Piketty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Equality
“Under British colonialism, Ireland was a laboratory for some of the most violent experiments in modern economics. It's also where uprisings against them yielded lessons that continue to matter today. There's no better way to learn them than through Jo Guldi's captivating storytelling. She shows how Irish peasants became data activists, making counter-surveys, counting evictions, mapping rent. They used every technology of media and persuasion available to them to force the powerful to concede. Their invention - the rent strike, born as the literal alternative to killing landlords - traveled from Ireland to Gandhi's India to the American civil rights movement. In a world where housing is again unaffordable, this magnificent book recovers a history that landlords would prefer we forget.”
—Raj Patel, New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing
No reviews yet
