Episode two, "The Land," is the origin story: how the United States came to hold 640 million acres in trust for the public, how concentrated wealth plundered and privatized much of it in the 1800s, and how the nation pulled back from the brink to build a system of parks, forests, and monuments that became the model for the rest of the world. But it's happening again: the richest Americans now command a share of the nation's wealth outstripping even the Gilded Age barons who plundered these lands the first time.

For most of the 1800s, the playbook was simple: barter with other countries, or take the land from Native nations who had lived on it for millennia, and then give it away — to settlers, to railroads, to mining companies, to states — to build a nation. But after the Civil War, the wealthy came to dominate the system, privatizin ...