An illustrated history of American innovators -- some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating -- by the author of the bestselling The American Century.
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"My favorite book on American History thus far, aside from anything written by John Dos Passos that is. " — Zachary (5 out of 5 stars)
"My favorite book on American History thus far, aside from anything written by John Dos Passos that is. "
“Terrific and inspiring stories about the dreamers and doors who dared to create the modern face of this great nation.”
“With energy and brilliance, Harold Evans brings to life America’s business geniuses. It’s a wonderful cast of famous and delightfully obscure innovators, ranging from Thomas Edison to Ted Turner. They Made America is so good that Evans deserves a place in it for the energy and innovation he has brought to the business of celebrating history and ideas.”
“With his keen analytic intelligence and gift for absorbing storytelling, Harold Evans has given us a brilliant, accessible, and original book about the innovators who truly shaped the way we live now. It is a historic and important work that sheds light on that most elusive of qualities: the mystery of genius.”
“Absorbing…Read just a few of these portraits and you begin to become dismayed at what you yourself have accomplished in your time on the planet: that is, comparatively nothing. Certainly nothing that compares with the lasting transformations wrought by Samuel Insull (who put cheap electricity into many thousands of homes) or Samuel Morse (whose telegraph liberated communication from the constraints of geography). It’s enough to make you throw the book down and plunge headlong into the development of time travel or climate control or antiaging pills—anything that might result in a legacy with some heft to it.”
“In his second large-format book about US history, Evans extolls American moxie, that seemingly native mixture of initiative and luck that produced the Colt revolver, the FM radio, the Kodak camera, Mickey Mouse, and eBay. As a historian, Evans is less concerned with the inventive spark itself than with how it finds capital and markets. This approach allows fresh insights into familiar stories; we know that the Wright brothers flew, but not, perhaps, how they flirted with the French before selling their machine to the US government. Evans favors ‘democratizers’ who generated affordable mass culture; Henry Ford is his paragon. In the current era, he focuses on the ferment of Silicon Valley, as embodied by such innovators as Larry Page, the Google cofounder, who marvels that more people don’t work in technology, because ‘that’s the easiest way to change the world.’”
“About as far from fast food as a coffee-table book can be: quirky and satisfying from the first chapter to the last sidebar.”
“Elegantly written…His spotlight is on the true American: the aristocracy of strategic visionaries, creative risk takers and entrepreneurial adventurers thriving in their natural environment, the free-market democracy of the United States.”
" This is an awesome bedtime reading book for parents with big kids. "
" My favorite book on American History thus far, aside from anything written by John Dos Passos that is. "
" Think of it as The Rest of the Story for the New Yorker set. "
Harold Evans, the author of The American Century and They Made America, is a celebrated historian and journalist. He was the editor of the Sunday Times for fourteen years before coming to America in 1984. He is the founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler, editorial director and vice chairman of U.S. News & World Report, the Atlantic magazine, Fast Company, and the New York Daily News. In 2002, Britain’s journalists voted Evans the greatest British newspaper editor of all time. He was knighted in Queen Elizabeth’s 2004 New Year honors list.
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