From Sea to Shining Sea – A review of “The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible” by Simon Winchester
Of the 193 sovereign nations that are member states of the
United Nations (as good a definition of a “country” as any), only 21 border on
two or more oceans. Of these 21 countries only a small group of 11 countries
share the distinction of bordering on the earth’s two greatest bodies of water:
the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The United States is not just one of these 11 countries;
it manages to get on the list in grand style. The country has a massive land
mass and long coast lines on both oceans unlike some other members of the “club
of 11” such as Chile, which can be uncharitably described as being effectively
a strip of land on the Pacific that just happens to touch the Atlantic.
Translating the phrase of “sea to shining sea” in the (unashamedly
patriotic) song, “America the Beautiful” into a real physical and cultural
reality took centuries of diligent and often mind-bending and back-breaking
work by courageous pioneers and adventurers. These people decided they were
going to bend untamed wilderness to their will and embark on engineering marvels
that still manage to boggle the mind. In the process, these pioneers wove
regions and lands as disparate as the cotton fields of Louisiana; the rugged
hills of Appalachia and the windswept coastal fishing towns of New England into
a multicolored, imperfect but ultimately enduring quilt that is the modern
United States. These people had to put together rail networks; draw up
cartographic and geological maps; build steamships and carve out broadcast
networks and flight routes literally out of thin air to create the physical and
cultural bonds that hold the country together. Some of these pioneers remain
famous; some have seen their fame lapse with the passage of time while a great
number never achieved any renown that could be subsequently lost. Simon
Winchester’s new book (“The Men Who United the States”) provides a
great service to all these people, the well-known and the barely-known, by
telling their stories in as compelling and completes a manner that surely
deserves an award by some august body that hands out such laurels.
I found the book to be an absolutely great read, with a
lot of things to commend it to readers. Chief among the many commendable
qualities of the book was the author’s decision to organize the book in a
thematic fashion. Given the large cast of characters that were involved in “Uniting
the States” and the considerable span of time this uniting took, there was a
temptation that a less able writer could easily have fallen for to organize the
book chronologically or, worse still, as a series of mini-biographies. That would
have resulted in a book that reads more like an encyclopedia. Thankfully for
readers everywhere the author avoided that trap. Instead Mr. Winchester, who
lived many years in Asia, chose to organize the book using the five elements
(or the Wu Xing) of Chinese philosophy: Wood, Earth, Water, Fire and Metal. The
author was helped by the various elements aligning pretty reasonably with the
broad chronology of American progress. The theme / element of wood corresponds closely
to the early years of post-independence America when logging activity was a key
driver of economic growth and the famed Lewis & Clark expedition took place
to the period from 1835 to the current day which is dominated by metal (i.e., electricity
grids, cable TV, radio transmission, telecoms / telegraph etc.).
The cast of characters and events so richly described by
Simon Winchester range from popular people and popular stories such as Samuel
Morse and the invention / commercialization of the telegraph; to the Lewis
& Clark expedition to cross the west after the Louisiana purchase to the
construction of the transcontinental railroad. Lesser known people and stories
also come alive in this book. My favorite story is that of John Wesley Powell,
the one-armed soldier who climbed mountains, led expeditions and finally served
as the 2nd director of the US Geological Survey. For the stories
most likely to be well known by his readers, the author sheds new light and
provides a fresh perspective that makes reading a story you already know still
pass for a very engaging read.
This book is one of the best I have read in a long time
but it is not without its flaws. One is that it adopts a sometimes overly
adulatory tone towards these men and the America they created, a minor flaw
that is probably linked to the enthusiastic patriotism often exhibited by
naturalized citizens (“Americans by choice”) such as the author. The second and
slightly irritating flaw was the author’s constant reference to Native
Americans as “Indians”, a deliberately non-political correct term that most of
the literati in America has jettisoned by now. I found the constant use of the
term to be particularly silly, especially since “Indian” is a term that
Christopher Columbus applied to Native Americans when he got lost, landed on
American shores and thought he had arrived in India!
All told, this is a truly good book that deserves to be
highly placed on best seller lists.
