Books by Robert Hall

Mr. Hall has abstracted the earliest of the land records (the patents) and grouped the information by owners and by hundreds. The level of detail included clearly separates this work from rent roll abstracts and land records and makes it more useful. Patentees and other persons named in the patent document are identified and the relationships or involvement of such persons is defined. This includes relatives, former tract owners, persons transported, persons completing service, surveyors, public officials, contributors of rights to acreage, trades and, occasionally, employers. The work is amply footnoted to include any unusual information found including personal relationships, disputes, and even an occasional reference to a burial site. Also included are tracts now located in adjoining counties that were granted as Anne Arundel tracts. Hall has identified virtually all the Anne Arundel patentees along with others who owned the land or warrant or acted as owner. In addition, he includes references to tract location by river, creek, or branch. In nearly all cases he identifies neighbors and their tracts and, using data gleaned from other records such as probate, judicial proceedings, church and marriage records, he has identified and included many grants not included in the Rent Rolls. An every-name index and an Index of Tracts add to the value of this work.

An examination of the society-wide relationship crisis that threatens us all—and a strategic look at how we can reverse it--It is the crisis that everyone feels but that has gone unnamed. We see the pieces: families disintegrating; communities in chaos; businesses losing the trust of customers and employees; political and religious discourse that sows dysfunction and divide. Yet until now, no one has connected the dots that reveal the larger narrative. Our broken relationships have a death grip on economic, political, and social advancements that capitalism, democracy, social programs, and tax policy have been unable to break.  Cumulatively this crisis feeds an emerging caste system: Individuals and organizations that possess superior relationships have, while those with deteriorating relationships are destined to have not.  In This Land of Strangers, Robert Hall lays the crisis bare, and you will be shocked at the magnitude of destruction he reveals. Hall’s best-selling business book, The Streetcorner Strategy for Winning Local Markets, helped spawn the customer relationship management movement.  Now, with deep passion and insight borne from three decades of study, he widens the lens to look at the breadth of our relational decline and the societal trends that got us here. Focusing on four key domains—home, work, politics, and faith—he presents wide-ranging research that explores the unraveling of our life-giving relationships and the attendant costs.  He debunks the assumption that we can build better lives and a stronger society on crumbling relationships. With engaging narrative style and stories, Hall looks at modern life through the prism of relationships. He challenges readers to embrace three aims that will reverse the forces that gave birth to today’s land of strangers to usher in a new era—the Age of Relationship.

First published in 1981, this unique study discusses the evolution of Plato's thought through the actual developments in Athenian democracy.