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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4817 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-01
• Released on: 2008-05-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
America's first century was defined by expansion and the negotiation of territories among areas colonized by the French and Spanish, or occupied by natives. The exact location of borders became paramount; playwright and screenwriter Stein amasses the story of each state's border, channeling them into a cohesive whole. Proceeding through the states alphabetically, Stein takes the innovative step of addressing each border-north, south, east, west-separately. Border stories shine a spotlight on many aspects of American history: the 49th parallel was chosen for the northern borders of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana because they ensured England's access to the Great Lakes, vital to their fur trade; in 1846, Washington D.C. residents south of the Potomac successfully petitioned to rejoin Virginia (called both "retrocession" and "a crime") in order to keep out free African-Americans. Aside from tales of violent conquest and political glad-handing, there's early, breathtaking tales of American politicos' favorite sport, gerrymandering (in 1864, Idaho judge Sidney Edgerton single-handedly "derailed" Idaho's proposed boundary, to Montana's benefit, with $2,000 in gold). American history enthusiasts should be captivated by this fun, informative text.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Mark Stein is a playwright and screenwriter. His plays have been performed off-Broadway and at theaters throughout the country. His films include Housesitter, with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. He has taught writing and drama at American University and Catholic University and lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews

How the States Got Their Shape
Thanks to C-SPAN I saw an interview with the author. Thanks to Amazon I purchased several copies for Christmas gifts. Each recipient has been delighted and each person has commented, "I always wondered how (name of state)got to be that way." Fun facts.

A Shapeless History
This book offers many interesting tidbits for the geography buff. There are indeed interesting stories behind the borders of many of the American states, like some forgotten bloodshed over the deceptively straightforward borders of Kansas, or how Maryland's piecemeal geography is the result of losing every border dispute it ever got into. We learn that the older states have crooked borders due to colonial shenanigans and faulty surveying, and that many of the newer states have purposefully similar heights and widths. It's interesting how much American states used to care about the exact placement of their borders, with gamesmanship and even wars surprisingly common in the age before integrated economies and effective national government.

But as several other reviewers have noticed, this book has some crucial structural weaknesses. The states are presented alphabetically, and regardless of any advantages from a presentation standpoint, this method still leads to boredom for the reader as most boundaries are described in the chapters for both of the states involved. A regional or chronological structure would have worked better, especially because Stein attempts to inject historical trends into his analysis but usually is only able to deliver non-sequiturs to wrap up repetitive chapters. Stein commits a fair number of factual errors (see some of the other reviews for details) and misses some kinks in borders that he describes as perfect straight lines, such as Colorado/Utah, Wyoming/Montana (within Yellowstone National Park), the north border of Vermont, and New Mexico at the junction of Texas and Oklahoma.

Most importantly, Stein does not adequately cite his sources, which shouldn't be a big deal except that he tries to insert historical drama with no support, particularly his dozens of statements about how the government was concerned about "equality" when creating most of the states that came about after the Revolution. This might have been evident in some of Stein's sources, but he offers no evidence of what type of "equality" was desired (geographical? economic? population?) and does not elaborate on why this was important, if it was true. So in the end, this book remains interesting, in an encyclopedic sort of way, for fans of American geography. But Stein attempted to add a historical narrative which ends up being shapeless. [~doomsdayer520~]

Decent Read
I thought the topic and the content was great. Very interesting, along with good maps and detail. However, the setup was poor. Instead of going in alphabetical order, it should have gone by time sequence. Alphabetically caused the book to jump around and lose focus causing it to get boring.