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.
What Others Say
Fascinating topic, poorly executed
Being a history and geography buff, I was pretty excited to pick up a copy. But I was quickly disappointed: the book was poorly organized and ended up being fairly repetitive.
The book does have some pros, namely that it covers pretty much everything and has a corresponding map for every state and every peculiar state line.
But there are more cons. The book is organized alphabetically, which means that information you read about in the chapter on Alabama is repeated later on when you read the chapter on Mississippi. The states should have been organized in the order in which they were formed. And the issue of repeated information is a problem in itself because sometimes information is repeated and other times you are ... Read More
a fun read
This has been a fun book to read.
It an easy read and fun to have on the coffee table for people to leaf through,find a state of choice,and gain a few facts that they did't know before.
Great idea that falls apart in execution
Giving this a generous third star because I'm a geography nerd, but it was kind of disappointing. Three reasons:
1) I understand listing the states alphabetically (I chose not to read them that way) as a reference work, but this isn't really being sold/marketed as a reference work, but more of a popular geography. Another reviewer thought it should've been done by region, and I agree.
2) If you're going to do it alphabetically, you need to include all the info for each state. Sure, there's the repetition issue, but there's already a fair amount of repetition anyway (not sure why he went through the trouble of the 'Do Not Skip This' intro section if he was going to tell us over and over and over the same info) -- why ... Read More
How the States Got Their Shapes
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.
A Short History of Every Boundary in the U.S.
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, ... Read More
