The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible

by Simon Winchester

Overview

“Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.” —Tom Brokaw

Simon Winchester, acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Atlantic and The Professor and the Madman, delivers his first book about America: a fascinating popular history that illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings.

How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators, such as Lewis and Clark and the leaders of the Great Surveys; the builders of the first transcontinental telegraph and the powerful civil engineer behind the Interstate Highway System. He treks vast swaths of territory, from Pittsburgh to Portland, Rochester to San Francisco, Seattle to Anchorage, introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States.

Throughout, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree. Featuring 32 illustrations throughout the text, The Men Who United the States is a fresh look at the way in which the most powerful nation on earth came together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062079619
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/16/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	232,621
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.

Hometown:

New York; Massachusetts; Scotland

Date of Birth:

September 28, 1944

Place of Birth:

London, England

Education:

M.A., St. Catherine¿s College, Oxford, 1966

Website:

http://www.simonwinchester.com

Editorial Reviews

Entertaining. ... A pleasure.” — New York Times Book Review

“A rousing tribute to the alliances, agencies, and inventions - from Lewis and Clark to the Internet - that underpin our more perfect union. A stunning, highly original feast of a book.” — STACY SCHIFF, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cleopatra

“Vivid, valuable. ... An extraordinary, propulsive tale.” — Wall Street Journal

“An impeccably researched, erudite, well-told tale, peppered with occasional grace notes.” — Miami Herald

“An elegantly written account... filled with fascinating information.” — Boston Globe

“[M]esmerizing and fascinating… Mr. Winchester is a master storyteller, and all the individuals, places, and events that he passionately writes about come to life in exquisite detail.” — New York Journal of Books

“Winchester has found a thematic way to tell this familiar story so it seems fresh and informative, even fascinating.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Winchester provides surprising insights into our social history, further enriching his narrative with accounts of his personal odysseys around the country. The results are highly recommended for public and school libraries and all readers looking for new and stimulating perspectives on the history of America.” — Library Journal

“A most genial storyteller” — Las Vegas Weekly

“[I]nformative and absorbing” — The Oregonian (Portland)

“Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.” — Tom Brokaw

“What makes this book so enjoyable is that he ties the development of these advances to some brilliant but idiosyncratic personalities.” — BookPage

“He … freshens U.S. history by refusing to tell it through the usual suspects.” — Seattle Times

“The subtitle promises readers a sackful of exciting tales-and the author delivers. This is a clever, engaging and original look at what would seem well-trodden historical paths; but Winchester, delightfully, breaks a fresh trail.” — The Economist

“The tales he weaves were more engaging than most contemporary fiction.” — Zócalo Public Square

From the Publisher

A rousing tribute to the alliances, agencies, and inventions - from Lewis and Clark to the Internet - that underpin our more perfect union. A stunning, highly original feast of a book.

Stacy Schiff

An impeccably researched, erudite, well-told tale, peppered with occasional grace notes.

Miami Herald

An elegantly written account... filled with fascinating information.

Boston Globe

[I]nformative and absorbing

The Oregonian (Portland)

Entertaining. ... A pleasure.

New York Times Book Review

[M]esmerizing and fascinating… Mr. Winchester is a master storyteller, and all the individuals, places, and events that he passionately writes about come to life in exquisite detail.

New York Journal of Books

Vivid, valuable. ... An extraordinary, propulsive tale.

Wall Street Journal

A most genial storyteller

Las Vegas Weekly

Winchester has found a thematic way to tell this familiar story so it seems fresh and informative, even fascinating.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Vivid, valuable. ... An extraordinary, propulsive tale.

Wall Street Journal

An impeccably researched, erudite, well-told tale, peppered with occasional grace notes.

Miami Herald

The subtitle promises readers a sackful of exciting tales-and the author delivers. This is a clever, engaging and original look at what would seem well-trodden historical paths; but Winchester, delightfully, breaks a fresh trail.

The Economist

He … freshens U.S. history by refusing to tell it through the usual suspects.

Seattle Times

What makes this book so enjoyable is that he ties the development of these advances to some brilliant but idiosyncratic personalities.

BookPage

The tales he weaves were more engaging than most contemporary fiction.

Zócalo Public Square

Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.

Tom Brokaw

The tales he weaves were more engaging than most contemporary fiction.

Zócalo Public Square

A rousing tribute to the alliances, agencies, and inventions - from Lewis and Clark to the Internet - that underpin our more perfect union. A stunning, highly original feast of a book.

STACY SCHIFF

A brisk and bracing race through American history, geography, geology -- and ingenuity, with a dash of psychology and sociology thrown in.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Winchester’s latest history profiles a huge cast of eclectic characters who helped transform America from a cluster of colonies to a unified nation through the taming of the wilderness and the expansion of the country’s infrastructure. The sweeping narrative is cleverly organized into five sections—each corresponds to one of the classical elements (wood, earth, water, fire, metal) and focuses on a different phase of American exploration or development. Winchester (The Alice Behind Wonderland) masterfully evokes the excitement of the nation’s early days—when opportunity and possibility were manifest in uncharted mountains and new technologies—while bringing each of his subjects to life. Some, like Lewis and Clark, are familiar, while others—like the many topographers who set down the Mexican and Canadian boundaries—are more obscure, but no less interesting. Winchester, a Brit who recently became an American citizen, also incorporates personal travel anecdotes to comment on pivotal locations. This bold decision is the key to the book’s greatest achievement: conveying the large-scale narrative of unification via the small-scale experience of the individual—the creation of a people by the agglomeration of persons. Illus. and maps. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Using a nifty structure around the five classic elements of wood, earth, water, fire and metal, Winchester (Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, 2010, etc.) celebrates the brains and brawn that forged America's Manifest Destiny. The author tells the story of the tremendous movement East to West of pioneers, explorers, miners, mappers and inventors whose collective labors made the U.S. truly e pluribus unum. Men take most of the spotlight here. Lewis and Clark's Native American guide Sacagawea is one of the only females singled out by the author, who writes that she was "the key that opened the gates of the West and allowed the white men through." Nonetheless, Winchester can tell a good yarn with evident relish, enlisting the element in question to aid in delineating his big themes: Thomas Hutchins' visionary survey system of 1785 became the model for parceling up the vast expanse of the American West, township by township; William Maclure made the first truly detailed geological map of the U.S. in 1809; the discovery of the "fall line" in many American rivers suddenly rendering them impassable prompted the brilliant use of the canal system as employed by Loammi Baldwin; the building of the interstate road system, beginning with the very first in Cumberland, Md., constructed by John McAdam's new crushed-rock method in 1812; and finally, the advent of the ubiquitous telegraph wires across the country by 1860, carrying information and spelling the beginning of the new age and the end of the old. In between these milestones are a myriad other stories of American ingenuity, which Winchester recounts with enormous gusto and verve. Another winning book from a historian whose passion for his subjects saturates his works.

Kirkus Reviews