How the States Got Their Shapes |
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List Price: $22.95
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Manufacturer: Collins
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.3
EAN: 9780061431388
ISBN: 0061431389
Label: Collins
Manufacturer: Collins
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2008-06-01
Publisher: Collins
Release Date: 2008-05-27
Studio: Collins
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Editorial Reviews:
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Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake? We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins. Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand. How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey. How the States Got Their Shapes examines: - Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania
- Why Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan
- Why some Hawaiian islands are not Hawaii
- Why Texas and California are so outsized, especially when so many Midwestern states are nearly identical in size
Packed with fun oddities and trivia, this entertaining guide also reveals the major fault lines of American history, from ideological intrigues and religious intolerance to major territorial acquisitions. Adding the fresh lens of local geographic disputes, military skirmishes, and land grabs, Mark Stein shows how the seemingly haphazard puzzle pieces of our nation fit together perfectly.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: How the States Got Their Shapes
Comment: This is a very interesting book if you are interested in American or Local history. There are good stories behind why states have such different borders. Good for school children, goes beyond what they learn in public school.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Short History of Every Boundary in the U.S.
Comment: This work has the rare ability to pull you in to the minutiae of boundary agreements, disagreements, and just plain mistakes that characterize the present lines of all 50 states. I did not know that the little jog Virginia takes at the Tennessee border was the result of a mistake by a surveyor, or that Wisconsin and Michigan, to this day, dispute the ownership of a wedge of land tucked away in the north woods of each state. Or that Illinois has a border 60 miles north of Chicago to accomodate canals that were never built, or that Maryland was the result after all the states around it had taken their bite of what its founders thought of as its original grant of land. The author has set out in interesting detail many of the foibles, errors, and, yes, great Congressional foresight, in setting the states up as functioning entities, while at the same time presenting his information in short descriptions. There is copious use of maps for each state that make following along with the development of each boundry an easy task. I reccomend this book for anyone, historian or not.
Customer Rating:
Summary: how the states got their shapes
Comment: This is a splendid book shipped promptly and well-packaged. I have bought four copies now. One for me and three for gifts. A good read for young and old.[ASIN:0061431389 How the States Got Their Shapes]]
Customer Rating:
Summary: Some helpful information, but woefully incomplete
Comment: There is a lot of useful information in this slim volume, but the omissions I know about without so much as cracking open a book indicate to me that the author didn't really do enough research to justify his grandiose title.
I enjoyed learning such things as how a small valley was transferred from Massachusetts to New York hundreds of years after their borders were presumably set. Indeed, I wondered why Arizona didn't seek to cede the isolated and ungovernable Colorado City, home of alleged polygamists, to Utah on the same basis. It was also interesting to learn about how some lines were mis-surveyed, though Stein could have gone into further depth as to why in some cases courts would allow this to continue.
Given that nearly every school child knows about the Mason-Dixon line, it would have seemed natural for Stein to cover their work in far more detail than he did.
But what really bugged me is that he totally missed a number of interesting issues relating to borders. For example, there was an arbitration between the U.S. and Canada over the border between Alaska and British Columbia in the panhandle region. This makes for interesting history, the idea that our border was subject to a vote of six people, three from each country. Stein doesn't mention it at all. There was a war called the Pig War, commemorated by a National Historic Site, over British and American claims to the San Juan and Gulf Islands off Washington. And why does the border, which follows the 49th parallel even to include a tiny, noncontiguous area called Point Roberts, suddenly head southward so that Vancouver Island isn't split between the U.S. and Canada? Not a word from Stein. Finally, Isle Royale, the largest island in Lake Superior, is (a) in the United States, not Canada; and (b) in Michigan, not Minnesota, to which it is far closer. Why? Not a word from Stein.
If these things, all of at least as much interest as the questions Stein does ask in his book, are not covered, what others of which I am unaware are not covered as well?
Customer Rating:
Summary: this is NOT the first book on this subject
Comment: Our library just got this book in, and it bothers me that the promotion of this book includes the falsehood that this is the first book to tackle how the states got their shapes... Just nine years ago, there was the book The Shape of the Nation-Why the States are Shaped Like That by Jim Feldman, which is arguably a better book and with better resources/references/footnotes. You might like to poke around a bit to see what else is out there (such as Mr. Feldman's book) before you invest the money and reading-time in this book.
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