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Title: Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy by Andro Linklater ISBN: 0-8027-1396-3 Publisher: Walker & Co Pub. Date: December, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Measuring America
Comment: Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy is a book filled with interesting information about how the government needed an accurate way to measure and sell lands west of the Ohio River.
The United States' greatest asset was the land west of the Ohio River, but in order to sell this huge territory, it first had to be surveyed... measured and mapped. But before that could be accomplished, a uniform set of measurements had to be chosen for the new republic. In January 1790, George Washington put the establishment of a single system of weights and measures as one of his most urgent priorities... defense and currency were only deemed more important.
This book is filled with interesting information about early America and tells a fascinating story of how this unique system was achieved and how it has profoundly shaped our country and its culture for more than two hundred years. This book tells us how the traditional view of the world was being increasingly challanged by objective reasoning.
From measuring and mapping land for ownership the story is told. There is human and intellectual drama as cities are laid out in blocks, making for a grid pattern. Weights and measures were being standardized making for better and fairer commerce. All leading to the ultimately gained American Customary System... the last traditional system in the world.
I found the book to be very readable and highly informative. It is well-written and gives the reader a broad understandng for why weights and measures were important... for without them the United States wouldn't exist.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Squaring of America
Comment: Andro Linklater is a Scottish journalist who fell in love with America when he was flying over it, looking out the window at "the spectacular grid of city blocks, the squared-off American Gothic farms, and the long, straight section roads that caught the imagination of Kerouac." Now he has written a fascinating book to tell us just how we got so square. _Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy_ (Walker) shows that geometry and land acquisition and speculation drove the development of the nation.
The importance of simply measuring the land has reinforced for Americans the value of land ownership. Native Americans did not enclose or measure land, and thus they could not convincingly demonstrate (to those who wanted to take it from them) that they owned it. This pattern was true not just in America, but in, for example, South Africa and Australia. Patterns of demarcation even influenced regional character. In the South, the legislatures were dominated by landowners who relied upon local surveyors who did not use chains and theodolites, but instead relied on marked trees and memory. Such a system caused violent struggles, but it also meant that doubts over actual ownership inhibited speculation and transfer of land. In the North, farmers would settle, improve the land, sell, and move to another measured plat; in the south, owners kept the property for generations, and Linklater refers to the effect on southern literature of such patterns of survey and ownership as being good material for future scholarly research. The squares laid out in the 19th century did not help efficient farming, but they helped the financier, who could easily track the value of the squares; settlement was based on speculation. The squares impressed themselves on urban consciousness, too. The beautifully laid out Washington, D.C. with its frequent diagonals was seldom copied, as the grid alone was easier to lay out and to sell segmentally. Circleville, Ohio, was originally laid out as a series of rings and radians, but was quickly converted to a grid once people started residing there.
In the latter part of the 19th century, Chief Seattle complained, "We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?" Fairly or not, logically or not, the answer was that marking the land made ownership, and ownership made America. Measuring the land and speculating in real estate might seem an unlikely subject for an interesting book, but this is a surprising and sometimes romantic tale. Linklater's readable history is a valuable commentary on a particular way we became particularly American.
Rating: 4
Summary: This book answers a lot of questions!
Comment: This book draws together a broad range of history concerning measures, measurements and the people who make them. Then it tells the story of how these interactions have affected American history, politics, geography, home ownership and many other things.
Did you every wonder why the US didn't adopt the metric system when it was first proposed by France? Well (like many other things) the story I was taught in school was short, dull and misleading.
The real story is full of action and adventure.
The action involves a secret last meeting of Louis XVI with his scientific advisors the night he attempted escape, a man with a passion for collecting rare flowers, a hurricane in the Caribbean, a treacherous French governor, pirates, an Indian massacre of US Army troops on the frontier, and the struggles between Thomas Jefferson and real estate speculators!
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Title: The Measure of All Things : The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World by Ken Alder ISBN: 0743216768 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet by Nicholas Crane ISBN: 0805066241 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 02 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: A Thread Across the Ocean : The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by John Steele Gordon ISBN: 0060524464 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Mapping the West by Paul Cohen, David Rumsey ISBN: 0847824926 Publisher: Rizzoli Pub. Date: 23 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Those Tremendous Mountains: The Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by David Freeman Hawke, Meriwether Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Lewis, David Freeman Hawke ISBN: 0393317749 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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