About book The Men Who United The States CD: The Men Who United The States CD (2013)
An interesting perspective on the history of the United State. The author's approach to breaking things down into sections, like the elements, was unique but it did seem at times like he had to stretch to get things to fit in those categories. In these type of books, I do expect to hear some fascinating new anecdotes and details about historical events and figures and in this, Winchester didn't disappoint. Overall a worthwhile read and I will probably check out some of his other works at some point. I'm a Simon Winchester fan, and would love to have lived his life thus far, and if I could have books from only a single author with me on a desert island, his wouldn't be a bad choice. Not surprisingly then, there are several things that make this book interesting, not least of which are Winchester's personal anecdotes (which have annoyed some reviewers) which aren't just there for fluff, but which work to relate the modern reader to the theme being discussed in a particular chapter. There's also the broad research which (again, while being criticized in various ways by some reviewers) adds a good bit of detail to things that I generally knew, but lacked background on. Its not practical for me to read everything in his bibliography, so I'm happy with his filtered view. I even salute his clever idea to divide the survey up into sections based on the elements and how Americans' technological and scientific mastery of those elements helped propel the nation toward (at least) physical unity.That said, I didn't love this book either, tempering my review. The sections felt a little bit gimmicky, and I'm more comfortable thinking about history in a timeline (which, interestingly, is a particularly American/German/Swiss way of thinking about time) and when I had read about the telegraph lines stretching across the country, the railroads, and then the highways...all in relative chronological proximity to one another, it felt like I was going back and forth over the same ground. I'm a slow reader, and handling this more compactly would have helped me enjoy it more and also make better sense of it. It was an interesting idea to lay out the book this way, but it didn't work very well for me.And then there's the notion of uniting the states as well. There was some attention paid to northern and southern philosophical and economic differences in places, but not a lot of talk about how visionaries might have employed these physically unifying technologies to help overcome those differences. And... if those differences are/were too profound to be completely overcome, it would have been interesting to discuss that.Finally, there were some odd choices of focus in certain sections. I wonder if other readers - poring over such a sweeping historical treatise - felt like they spent way too much time reading about the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. If you're painting the Mackinack Bridge, you can't afford to pause and paint elaborate murals on parts of the superstructure.
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Interesting book for my fellow history nerds. Beautifully written - fascinating stories.
—Kay
Fabulous. Such a great collection of events that have connected to US. Great read
—dooka
