A fascinating look at how borders were fashioned making up the United States.

This book will now be part of a bookring with the goal to hit all 50 States! When it hits a new state I'll update the map :)

Participant List:
mepwave, Texas *done*
elizardbreath, Oregon *done*
2of3Rs, Oregon *done*
greatnimrod, New York *done*
Bkind2books, Tennessee *done*
dabercro, Utah *done*
hyphen8, Hawaii *done*
mssaver, Illinois - skipped?
PaDutchTravel, Pennsylvania <--- Book is here
...
You???

mepwave, Texas (now NJ)


visited 7 states (14%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Amsterdam travel guide for Android

Mailed to Elizardbreath!

Received this yesterday---thanks!

3/27 ETA: Whew! Where did the month go?? I kept this longer than planned! I'll PM the next in line and get it moving along.
4/4 ETA: 2of3Rs asked to be skipped. PMing next in line now.

Sending to the next in line. Wow, so sorry it took me so long to send this off! I never did get to finish it but I enjoyed what I read!

To the finder of this book:

This book is gift, no strings attached, from me to you. You may keep it forever, pass it along to a friend, or release it into the wild to be found by someone else.

If you are new to BookCrossing, welcome! Enjoy the site, the book, and the BookCrossing community. I hope you'll join us...it's free! If you do, please consider using me, elizardbreath, as your referring member. You can even remain anonymous if you wish!

I hope you'll make a brief journal entry so all the previous and future readers can track this book's journey.

Thanks, and Happy BookCrossing! :)

I apologize to the participants of the book ring for taking so long to read this book. I had a baby in July and have had next to no reading time for myself, but I really enjoyed reading about each state and didn't want to rush through all the information. I could probably read it three more times before the majority of the facts sink in. Thank you for the opportunity.

Arrived today - it may take me a few weeks to get this read as I have a few promised before it but it should not take too very long as I always have several books going at once.

Finished today and really liked the content and concept, but thought that the execution needed work. I loved the combination of geography and history of the states and there was plenty of trivia to appeal to my inner nerd. My biggest compliant about this book was the way that the author set it up. He had this done in alphabetical order by state - so, what's wrong with that? Well, it ended up with too much referring back to other states or to the introductory material. After awhile, it was annoying. How many times could you read "See Figure xxx in [Insert name of state]" without wanting to scream? Ditto with the "See DON'T SKIP THIS". Over and over again, I found myself thinking how much better this would have flowed if it had been done in chronological order, or perhaps done by region.

A quote I liked:

The more one looks at state borders, the more questions those borders generate. Why do the Carolinas and Dakotas have a North state and a South state? Couldn't they get along? Why is there a West Virginia but not an East Virginia? And why does Michigan have a chunk of land that's so obviously part of Wisconsin?

This will go on to dabercro.

And although the list has not been updated, hyphen8 and mssaver both have asked to be added to the bookray. Maybe we can get more folks to jump on and get this to more states.

On to Dabercro

Arrived in the mail yesterday. It is on top of Mt. TBR and will be my next read.

An interesting read. Learned much about how the states were formed and the political thinking at the time as our forefathers were creating our country.

I agree with Bkind2books, the book should have been arranged in a different manner. The alphabetical arrangement of the states did not work. The book felt very disjointed. All the references to go to a different state or back to the introductory part did not make for an enjoyable reading experience.

Sending to the next participant, hyphen8, in Hawaii.

Received today as part of a bookring. Looks like fun, but I do wish the print wasn't quite so tiny! Maybe it will look better in the morning. :p

Here's another copy on my BookCrossing shelf.

Not done yet, but I thought I'd post an update...

I think the author wanted to make it so anyone could pick a state from the table of contents and read about it as a stand-alone, which does make a sort of sense but leads to a lot of repetition. Interesting that he chose to duplicate text but not duplicate the maps; it's a bit annoying to read about one state and have to refer to a map in another section. I could maybe see this working better as an interactive e-book - then you could click on "figure 105" and see it more easily.

Started with Alabama because it was first in line, but then decided (based in part on the entries by prior readers) to follow a more geographic approach. Still a lot of redundancy but it makes a bit more sense to me this way. On the other hand, I sort of need to keep a checklist!

So far, I've read, in this order:

Alabama
Mississippi
Georgia
Florida
South Carolina
North Carolina
Tennessee
Kentucky
Virginia
West Virginia
Pennsylvania
Maryland
Delaware
Washington, D.C.
New Jersey
New York
Connecticut
Rhode Island
Massachusetts
Vermont
New Hampshire
Maine

Then back down to the other side of the Mississippi River:

Louisiana
Arkansas
Missouri
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Ohio
and I'm currently in Michigan.

So I'm over half-way done and hope to get this moving again in the next couple of weeks.

Interesting to note that so far every state seems to have had border disputes with its neighbors - some more strenuous than others - and some of the dates for those disputes are more recent than I expected!

Grr. I'm so annoyed with myself. I finished the book and pulled out my little sheet of notes with the order I used so I could use it to make a journal entry...and now I've lost the silly thing!

I know I made a couple of adjustments to my original plan along the way, but I think this is what I ended up with after Michigan:

Wisconsin
Minnesota
North Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska
Kansas
Oklahoma
Texas
New Mexico
Arizona
California
Nevada
Utah
Colorado
Wyoming
Montana
Idaho
Washington
Oregon
Alaska
Hawaii

So I did get to them all, eventually. I think you could probably come up with an argument for as many different ways of ordering the states as there are readers, but this is what made sense to me at the time...

Edit: found my list and the order above matches what I did. :)

In the mail to the next reader by regular mail (not media) - hopefully it will arrive before she goes on vacation!

Note: mssaver confirmed by PM on August 28, 2014 that the book had been received, but it was not journaled. Apparently PaDutchTravel did receive it at some point but the full BCID was missing?!

Interesting to learn how the different states got their shapes. It would make a good coffee table book. So appreciative that Mepwave shared it with us.