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: #586 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.
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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

Interesting perspective on the geographic layout of America
Fascinating how even the earliest states had a bearing on the borders of those in the middle and western portions of the US.

Borders all over the map
I live in the panhandle of Connecticut and have always been fascinated about the vast irregularity of the borders of most of the United States. Author Mark Stein's informative new book, "How the States Got Their Shapes" is a quick report as to how each state's boundaries came into play...and there are dozens of different reasons why.

Two things stand out in Stein's book...the shaping of many of the eastern states (due to charters by England's Charles I and II) and the western ones by Congress (in an attempt to make states of equal a size as possible). In between these two devices all chaos ensues. It's one thing to have a river act as a natural boundary but if one looks at a map of the United States, rivers come and go supplanted by straight lines which don't always follow parallels or meridians. There are stories of bad surveying, compromises about gold mines and Indians, lines made anew to give certain states more access to lakes and to keep certain cities within some borders, interstate negotiations and the inevitable wars that helped to redraw the boundaries.

Stein's book would have been better organized by region than by state capitalization (there are continuous references to flip back or forward when better arrangements could have been made) and there are dates that are simply wrong or misleading... (Texas became a state in 1845, not 1846 and the Hoover Dam is listed as being created in 1935 AND 1936). But with the introduction of each state, Stein asks the reader to ponder questions about why that particular entity looks the way it does and that is, in itself, a nice historical challenge.

"How the States Got Their Shapes" is a good, if not a great or deep attempt to answer these questions but it does provide many facts we never learned in school. I recommend it for that reason.

Disappointing
This book is somewhat interesting, but overall it is very disappointing. Light on substance, heavy on repetition, and full of errors.

It quickly glosses over major historical events to race through each state's borders. The choice of dealing with the states alphabetically is odd and leads to reiteration of the same facts over and over without deeper explanation. The French and Indian War is mentioned 16 times, but the causes of it are never described.

Errors are frequent. In "Arizona," Stein writes about a buffer "...around the town of Yuma, California..." Yuma is in Arizona. He states that Texas joined the United States in 1846. It became a state in 1845. He never describes New Hampshire's northern border, stating that the western border of that state is the Connecticut River but completely ignoring the fact that the northern border departs from the river on its way to Maine.

The book seems amateurish and incomplete. I realize the author is a playwright, but that is not an excuse. It left me wanting more.