Status
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
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. But 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. This is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Packed with 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.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
I took one look at this and thought to myself, "OK, this has to be more interesting than it
Most of these explanations, though, are a lot more dull and prosaic, and the same ideas tend to crop up over and over: Straight-line borders come from treaties with France or Spain, or from Congress slicing up territories to create states of roughly equal size. Borders were often shifted to grant a state access to valuable waterways, or to prevent the creation of small pockets of land cut off from the rest of their states by rivers or mountains. Sometimes a state would want to keep a particularly desirable piece of land, but would cede a different piece to its neighbor in return, creating little dents or protrusions. And borders were often disputed due to bad surveying, or to ambiguous or contradictory land charters.
Now, I find it kind of nice to know all that, in general, but all the fiddly specifics... Well, I'm sure they were of absorbing importance to the people involved at the time, but I have to admit, I had a lot of trouble forcing myself to care. Even significant stuff like the way that the creation of new states was affected by and influenced the debate over slavery is more interesting in the abstract than in detail. Nor does the book make any real effort to bring the history to life with stories or commentary; it's just happy to report the basic facts.
I think you really just have to be much more of a geography nerd than I am to appreciate this stuff. It's not a bad book, by any means, but I think you have to come into it with a prior interest in the subject to get much out of it.
I also think that it suffers a bit from repetition. Most borders get discussed twice, once for each state involved. A certain amount of that is probably inevitable, but I think it might have helped a lot if the states were organized geographically, rather than alphabetically. That way, the discussion of each state's borders could have flowed naturally into a discussion of its neighbors'. Although maybe I'm missing the point there. Maybe the idea is that you should just look up the sections on the states you're particularly interested in, and I wasn't expected to actually read the whole thing.
If you've ever looked at a map of the United States and wondered, "Why does Wyoming take a bite out of Utah?" or
Written in a very simple, elegant style. Sure, there's quite a lot of repetition, but that's due to the subject matter. It goes with the territory, so to speak!
The biggest surprise/shock was how intelligently Congress handled the divisions of territories during the 19th century. Many of their decisions early on were based on the need to balance slave and non-slave states, as reflected in policies such as the Missouri Compromise. However, even after the Civil War, they did they utmost to keep things balanced. If there was a body of water nearby, they let nearby states have access, however small. They tried to break apart western states along even divisions of degrees. Considering the buffoons we elect to office, I was pleasantly surprised at their foresight throughout a century of turmoil. And it never ceases to impress me how accurately they surveyed lines with their current technology.
If you're a United Stated geography/history geek, get this book. Watch the TV series based on it. I'm sure it will pay off in a Trivial Pursuit game at some point in the future.
It's interesting to read about a time when Congress agreed that all states should be created equal (except for those
The only problem I have with this book is that it was presented alphabetically by state. When reading the book cover-to-cover (as opposed to flipping through it for reference), there is a lot of repeat information. I
Aside from that issue, I enjoyed this book. I love history and geography, but I will admit that these subjects can be dry. Stein has a really easy way of conveying this information. I will never look at the map of the USA the same way again.
The shapes of our states are far from random. Except, well, maybe Hawaii. Or so I thought, until I read this book (there are various atolls, and such, that are included in Hawaii’s “borders”). The author says in his
“Asking why a state has the borders it does unlocks a history of human struggles — far more history than this book can contain, though this book does aspire to unearth the keys.”
So, really, this book isn’t just about geography, but American history. Each state’s chapter begins with a series of questions, such as this one about California (where I was born):
“How come California is so big? And since it is so big, how come it doesn’t include that long peninsula [Baja California; part of Mexico] that continues from its southern end? Why are the straight lines of its northern and eastern borders located where they are? And why does its eastern border bend?”
Mr. Stein begins his response with: “If Congress followed a policy that all states should be created equal, why did it create California? Answer: It didn’t. California created itself. The land that became California came into the possession of the United States in 1848 with the end of the Mexican War. Before Congress could go through the process of dividing it into territories, a man named James Marshall spotted something shiny by the sawmill of his employer, John Sutter. It was gold.”
Mr. Stein goes on to explain that, suddenly, California had to deal with a high population, an economy, and “a very high crime rate“. Therefore, Californians drew up their own state constitution and their own borders.
Even seemingly dull state borders, such as the square-shaped Colorado, where I live now, has interesting history behind them. Well, Mr. Stein makes it all interesting. In another writer’s hand, this could have been a dull book. But it’s not.
The states are not discussed by chronological order (i.e. when it attained statehood), but by alphabetical order. Chapters are often in part cross-referenced to each other; so by the time I got to the last state, Wyoming, only two pages were devoted to it. Oh, well, I’m not sure many Wyomingites would protest; the population is so low there. Seriously, though, this book was a fascinating read for me. If you are a bit geekish like I am (and an American; I’m not sure those outside of America would be as interested), I’m sure you’d enjoy this book!
The author strives through the book to provide an overall context for the states' borders, and realizing that states were deliberately sized to stack on top of each other three or four high to cover the distance from the 37th to the 49th parallel is something I either didn't know or had forgotten, but it explains a lot. In some cases, however, the author's attempt to draw some meaning from the state borders falls short. He does, however, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that most of the surveyors hired to draw state lines were unable to succeed in their task--or if they drew a straight line, it didn't adhere completely to the direction it was supposed to be going in. At least one error creeps in as well, when the author says the size of Alabama and Mississippi differs by less than 1%. Actually, it is more like 6%.
So, the bottom line is, if you're a geography buff, you won't be able to put it down despite its shortcomings. Others, steer clear.
Very disappointing.
In conjunction with Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It, I also heartily recommend How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. It details the crazy journeys our wonderful 50 states took in order to end-up in the shapes that we know and love
I took my time, reading it over the course of six months, taking in a chapter or two between other books or just before bedtime. You might want to place your copy next to the toilet.
Anyhow, for history buffs, this is loaded with lots of cool information, including mention of events of which I was previously unaware, like the Pennamite Wars. There is also lots of boring information, as too often the obstruction caused by big obvious rivers make up the borders, but even there the book reinforces how important rivers and waterways were to American growth, a fact that might be lost on our modern automotive society.
While some mention is made of indigenous people, I do feel like the impact of our borders on Native American territories and treaties could have been given more attention.