The Men Who United the States: The Amazing Stories of the Explorers, Inventors and Mavericks Who Made AmericaSimonWinchester. London: William Collins, 2013.

Abstract

Men Who United States: Amazing Stories of Explorers, Inventors and Mavericks Who Made America Simon Winchester. London: William Collins, 2013.In 2011, British journalist Simon Winchester achieved his dream of becoming an American citizen after several years of residence. experience proved cathartic, especially when an immigration officer at Kennedy Airport took one look at his passport and remarked, Welcome Home (x). Winchester admitted to feeling almost overwhelmed by at last now being a part of all of (xiii), more precisely defined as belonging to a culture dedicated to principles of unity and progress, the promise of a better place and of better times ahead (xiv).The Men Who United States celebrates achievements of those men and women who spent their lives trying to fulfill this objective. Many of them are familiar figures in American history - Lewis and Clark, George Washington, Thomas Edison, Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell. Winchester looks at their lives in a refreshingly original way; he structures book according to five classical elements (wood, earth, water, fire, and metal) in belief that they lie at heart of all human achievement. Early explorers such as Lewis and Clark used wood as a basic component of their travels; they created wooden boats and kept themselves warm with wood-burning fires. Geologists in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries probed earth's surface for agricultural riches as well as to determine worth of land. America's rivers and streams were used as early highways and trade routes; later on they provided a major source of power which formed basis for creation of new frontiers. In subsequent centuries, there came invention of engines, which depended on firepower, whether they were fueled by steam, gasoline, or aviation. For telegraph, steel wire of telephone, iron mast of radio and television, and fiber-optic cables of Internet, metal was common factor.Within each of these five sections, Winchester looks at achievements of various luminaries: in water section, he discusses work of William Madure, a Scottish-born entrepreneur who helped to found American Academy of Natural Sciences and created a geological map of United States. Gouveneur Kemble Warren worked for four years on Warren Map, which represented definitive guide to western United States (109). Warren's map was a means to conquer earth, a way of dispelling fantasies about West that continued to dominate popular imagination.In water section, Winchester celebrates those who financed and implemented Erie Canal project, several of whom had no engineering experience whatsoever: The men who laid out routes were not surveyors, but judges. One of principal builders was an arithmetic teacher [... .] few could imagine knowing how to work a theodolite, pay out a surve check, or construct a pound lock gate (203). Yet they kept on with project, in belief that it would contribute to public good; not only would it create new trading opportunities, but it contributed to America's prestige worldwide: All Europeans [...] had already begun to admire [...] Erie Canal [...] longest canal in world (209). Later on in section, Winchester writes about Mississippi, which links nation from top to bottom, offering a kind of geographic strength, a degree of certainty, stability (229) to those who inhabit its banks. During Depression era, river lost this strength as billions of tons of topsoil were torn out by steel plows to be gushed out as liquid mud into sea. …