Product Description
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.
How the States Got Their Shapes
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CenVillager
August 19, 2010 - 10:05 amI won’t try to compete with the detailed review above. I just want to add that I have been wondering about the odd shapes of the states for years, and wishing for info on this topic.
I was thrilled to see that this book was finally available.
The book has surpassed my expectations. The details are fabulous. The ample maps fully illustrate the narrative.
Each state is explained. For example, why does Rhode Island have “island” in it’s name? Buy the book and find out.
When I lived in Mobile, I puzzled for years over Alabama’s “tab” at the south. My guess was that it had something to do with giving the state a gulf shoreline. (Maybe for condos?) I was wrong. It’s all Florida’s fault.
In short, this book is fascinating! Even if you think you’re not interested, you will be. The arcane knowledge you learn will make you the star of any party, or a total bore.
I love it!
Rating: 5 / 5
The Realist
August 19, 2010 - 10:55 amI agree the book has some interesting ideas in it, just not done very well. I could not even identify a thesis.
First, the book has no footnotes, no in text quotations from primary sources, and explanations are very, very brief. Each state gets about a page of typed material. The maps are small and lack the few details that are referenced in the text. For example, if the coal fields of north west Georgia explain the western border of Georgia, show us a map of the coal fields. If the Appalachain Mountains influenced Alabama, Georigia, and the Carolins, show us a map of the Appalachian Mountains. An elementary principle of writing books about maps: if you refer to something in the text as geographically significant, you better put a map in showing why. Maps are pictures, and writing about maps means using pictures as well as words.
Second, the book is poorly structured. While it may make sense to organize the states from A to W with each state given individual treatment, a reader can’t easily grasp themes and concepts that guide one state’s development with another. An example: Mississippi and Alabama and Florida. All these states’s histories are bound up with each other, but to get the picture you have to flip through the book and maybe you can get an idea of what happened. A more logical structure would be to create sections (the Colonies, The Nortwest Territories, The Plains, The South, The West, The Pacific Coast with Alaska and Hawai’i) and then the reader can easily understand the forces at work. The states didn’t develop in alphabetical order; why does this book?
Third: The book makes use of many implicit assumptions about why borders “should be” one way yet are not explained. While mentioned, it is never fully explained why Congress used equality as the basis for creating states. Equality of territory, population, access, ??? Since this idea makes up a substantial portion of the book, it needs to be developed fully with references, quotations from statutes, floor debates, etc.; more than a bibilography at the end. And the frequent assumption that it’s “normal” to use rivers for borders or straight lines is not supported at all. Are these assumptions warranted?
The idea of the book is interesting, yet the execution leaves much to be desired. It has so much potential to show how economics, culture, and movement interact with geography to define political spaces. It is so lacking in support and important detail as to make it worthless for serious use.
I gave it two stars and not one because the author is, after all, a playwright and not a serious historian, and so I forgive the “History Channel” syle treatment of the material. The editors and publishers are to blame for the book’s inadequacies. They should know what a history book is supposed to look like!
Rating: 2 / 5
David W. Straight
August 19, 2010 - 1:34 pmGeorgia has been undergoing a severe drought for several years now, particularly in the Atlanta area: as with Las Vegas, they are running out of water for lawns, fountains, golf courses, etc. So the governor had a well-publicized and very public prayer for rain. This review is not the place to discuss the religious and political implications of why God did not answer the governor’s prayers, but it is very relevant about what happened next. The Bible and the 10 Commandments has imprecations about coveting: the State of Georgia turned its covetous eyes on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga. The northern border of Georgia falls about a mile too far south to actually reach the river, and so Georgia has decided to contest its northern border with Tennessee, and to shift the border just far enough so that it can sink its fangs (so to speak) into the river. And you had thought that border disputes between the states was all finished 100-200 years ago!
How the Staes Got Their Shapes describes how the state borders came to be. Much of this is interesting, but some is not quite as exciting. There are states that are nicely squared off–no interesting little wiggles in the borders. The residents of, say, Colorado and Wyoming will probably find more to enjoy in the descriptions of those states than the rest of us. Everything is organized by state, but of course most borders affect other states as well–so there’s a great deal of cross-referencing, accompanied by an increasingly tiresome breathless “DON’T SKIP THIS” in full caps. You will get the impression that accidents happen frequently, and that many borders make no sense whatsoever, other than as lasting memorials to the inability of some surveyors to read their instruments carefully.
So it’s an interesting book. I also expect that as resources get scarcer (such as the water in the Tennessee River) we may see more attempts by states to challenge borders. As the book notes, in 1998 the Supreme Court ruled in New Jersey’s favor about the boundaries of Ellis Island: New York was the loser. You’ll see some strange-looking maps, such as the one with the State of Connecticut extending west in a narrow strip to the Pacific Ocean. Maybe Connecticut can dust off a few old rulings and grow a bit! So overall, this is a book that while perhaps a bit dull in some places is a lot of fun in many others.
Rating: 4 / 5
Eyesk
August 19, 2010 - 4:19 pmOur 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.
Rating: 2 / 5
Richard L. Goldfarb
August 19, 2010 - 6:22 pmThere 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?
Rating: 2 / 5