Welcome to Workman’s #30DaysofGiving! This holiday season, we will be excerpting from some of our favorite books of the year and giving readers the chance to win a copy. Follow along by visiting our master digital advent calendar, and use the hashtag #30DaysofGiving on social media for daily updates.

AMERICA THE INGENIOUS by Kevin Baker (Day 12)

The following is excerpted from the book. 

Inventing a Nation: America

No one person invents a nation, of course. The American project is one that still goes on today, and as it continues we involve more and more people in the work. It may never end, as we strive to get it right, and that will be just as well.

We are, more than almost any other country, one invented by the conscious work of man. We are the first nation to exist wholly in the modern world—a republic of laws, where everyone has a say, and anyone can join as long as they uphold those laws. We made ourselves, and we are constantly remaking ourselves as our world changes and we debate, over and over again, just what it means to be an American.

It hasn’t been an easy process. There were plenty of missteps and flaws in the design. Our original sin of slavery, the false and pernicious doctrines of race. Our mistreatment of the peoples we found here, the land grabs we perpetrated against our neighbors. Like too many inventors, at times we have despoiled what we had in our rush to get ahead, get rich.

Yet when we’ve made it work, ours has been as free and prosperous and diverse a society as has ever existed on this earth—one that, uniquely, has been able to bring in masses of people from everywhere else to join in its success. Countless individuals, great and obscure, male and female, free and enslaved, of all colors and faiths and backgrounds, have contributed to that accomplishment.

 

About the Book:

What are the origins of the electric guitar? How did the whaling ship work? Why was the invention of the electric motor so crucial for the New York City subway? The incredible stories behind these strokes of genius and more, told by author Kevin Baker, fill the pages of America the Ingenious.

Here are 76 of the most intriguing, important, and ingenious inventions realized in America, from the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater to the oil rig, the electric sewing machine, and the telephone. Who came up with these ideas? How long did they take to realize? What were the complications? How, exactly, do these things work? And how have they affected who we are today? This book will satisfy the curiosity of history and miscellany buffs alike. Readers will walk away with a new appreciation for these world-changing inventions, as well as a newfound understanding of what makes America the perfect breeding ground for ingenuity.

Buy the Book
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