It is a brand new, terrifying 'tragedy of the commons' : the world carved up and grabbed for the benefit the few. Whole countries have been snatched from under the feet of native residents. Saudi Arabia now owns most of Ethopia. The Reverend Moon owns a slice of South America the size of Switzerland. The world's richest and most acquisitive countries, corporations and individuals are grabbing land around the world to feather their own nests back home. Triggered by the 2008 world food crisis and the credit crunch, this grab is not just about securing food. It is also about commodities such as cotton, rubber, timber and biofuels. Giant mining companies are on the march.

Conservationists are staging their own land grab u fencing in the world's wilderness to create the private preserves of super-rich nature lovers, or to speculate in the new carbon markets. In the process, poor local inhabitants are being expelled. Full of larger than life characters: Gulf oil sheiks, Russian oligarchs, Chinese entrepreneurs, Wall Street and City of London speculators, Fred's new book will uncover why Goldman Sachs is buying up the Chinese poultry industry? What links a super-rich Saudi sheikh to Bill Clinton, Ethiopia's ex-freedom-fighting prime minister and the wastelands of the Saharan fringe. Who is buying Paraguay and Laos? who already owns Swaziland? And crucially, why we should be scared.