[.ca] Measuring America (ISBN 0452284597)

detailed, for sure:
This is that type of book that answers the question--"I wonder why so many cities are one a grid"-or variations there upon. Author Linklater provides fascinating historical insight and overview into the mapping of America. This is an enjoyable book with one minor--very minor--mistake. In East Liverpool, it's Ohio Route 39, not 38, that leads one to the roadside markers for the "Point of Beginning" I visited this location last Wednesday, after work. Linklater provides the perfect description of that site, and the surveyors' task.

This book answers a lot of questions!:
This book draws together a broad range of history concerning measures, measurements and the people who make them. Then it tells the story of how these interactions have affected American history, politics, geography, home ownership and many other things. Did you every wonder why the US didn't adopt the metric system when it was first proposed by France? Well (like many other things) the story I was taught in school was short, dull and misleading. The real story is full of action and adventure. The action involves a secret last meeting of Louis XVI with his scientific advisors the night he attempted escape, a man with a passion for collecting rare flowers, a hurricane in the Caribbean, a treacherous French governor, pirates, an Indian massacre of US Army troops on the frontier, and the struggles between Thomas Jefferson and real estate speculators!

An interesting history:
I really enjoyed this book. This is one example of the kind of history that can be informative and yet hold the reader's attention, though I admit it is a subject that has interested me a lot anyway. The book's primary thrust is the history leading to the fact that we do not normally use the metric system in the U. S. I must say that it makes a good case for an idea that I'd never run across before: that this is primarily because the French, in devising the definition of the meter, departed from an idea that many people, including Thomas Jefferson, thought would give the most internationally reproducible standard. Reading this book, it really seems he has his facts right, and his argument is convincing. I found that the book clarified a number of points that I have wondered about. One negative thing is that his appendix in the end has some (probably typographical) errors: one table shows 101, 102, etc. for what slould really be 10 with exponents 1, 2, etc.) and in several other tables, "grains" becomes "gains."