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How the States Got Their Shapes
by: Mark Stein

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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: June 01, 2008
Publisher: Collins
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Sales Rank: 1189
Studio: Collins

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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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- 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.

Rating:

- 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, 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 ... Read More

Rating:

- how the states got their shapes
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]]

Rating:

- Some helpful information, but woefully incomplete
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 ... Read More

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