They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators [Hardcover]

Harold Evans (Author), Gail Buckland (Author), David Lefer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2004

An illustrated history of American innovators--some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating-- by the author of the bestselling The American Century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Developed in tandem with a four-part PBS series to air in November, Evans's profusely illustrated and elegantly written book offers the same breadth and scope as his previous bestseller, The American Century. Evans, former president and publisher of Random House, profiles 70 of America's leading inventors, entrepreneurs and innovators, some better known than others. Along with such obvious choices as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, Evans profiles Lewis Tappan (an abolitionist who dreamed up the idea of credit ratings), Gen. Georges Doriot (pioneer of venture capital) and Joan Ganz Cooney, of the Children's Television Workshop. From A.P. Giannini (father of consumer banking) to Ida Rosenthal (the Maidenform Bra tycoon), Evans shows innovation as both a product of and a contributor to the grand apparatus of American society. And his spotlight is on the true American elite: the aristocracy of strategic visionaries, creative risk takers and entrepreneurial adventurers thriving in their natural environment, the free-market democracy of the United States. Evans doesn't neglect the latest generation of innovators, among them Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He concludes with a note of caution, pointing out the nation's recent loss of dominance in the hard sciences. But just as Edison was inspired by popular biographies of innovators before him, so might the next generation of scientific and commercial explorers find guidance in Evans's exciting survey. 500 color illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

In his second large-format book about U.S. 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 U.S. government. Evans favors "democratizers" who generated affordable mass culture; Henry Ford is his paragon. In the current era, he focusses on the ferment of Silicon Valley, as embodied by such innovators as Larry Page, the Google co-founder, who marvels that more people don't work in technology, because "that's the easiest way to change the world."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (October 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316277665
• ISBN-13: 978-0316277662
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 1.5 x 10.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Patents & Inventions

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This book should be in everyone's home October 21, 2004

By Robert Morrisette

Format:Hardcover

This book is large (9 x 11, 496 pages) and heavy. I can barely lift it with one hand. There are 500 illustrations, many in color, almost one on every page. The accomplishments of 70 innovators are included, such as Morse, Singer, Eastman, Ford, Noyce, Land, Watson, etc. Since I work with computers, I was interested that my former boss, Gary Kildall, is listed as the true founder of the personal computer revolution. His surprising story took 16 pages, IBM and Watson got 19 pages, Edison, 21 pages. This book would make a great Christmas gift. A PBS series follows in November.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovation as a Political Spirit Colorfully Chronicled November 13, 2004

By Ed Uyeshima HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Author Harold Evans has chronicled American history in a most personalized way, by spotlighting seventy innovators driven by the American spirit to be remembered for their particular contributions to our everyday lives. Divided into three parts and filled with hundreds of photographs and illustrations, this coffee table book is an ideal introduction to the people, both the famous and the forgotten, who have inspired the rest of us to think beyond our self-imposed boundaries and capitalize on ideas that would benefit the greater good. What Evans does very well in his incisive narrative is show how these ideas are not exclusive to any specific group or place and how they often came about by accident or through circumstances they could have never been foreseen. The common thread is a faith in technology in its earliest incarnation when the early settlers devised windmills as a way of getting water on the Great Plains to the latest trends with the electronic whiz kids of the Internet. Even more importantly, the author traces how most of these innovators have time and again proved to be "democratizers", driven not by greed but by an ambition to be remembered. In aggregate, these innovators translated the nation's political ideals into economic reality.

Part One covers our history up to the Civil War, and the inventions one remembers from the social studies class of our youth are covered here - the cotton gin, the Colt revolver, the telegraph, the sewing machine, the bicycle - but also some surprising things like blue jeans and the credit rating. The emergence of electricity and its subsequent predominance in our lives are covered in Part Two, when Edison indeed invented the incandescent bulb, as well as the "kinetoscope", an early motion picture projector. Of course, the Wright brothers and Henry Ford are in this section for obvious reasons, but so are those responsible for plastic, gas masks, Weight Watchers, Walt Disney Enterprises and even Barbie dolls. Probably the most interesting portion is Part Three, which covers the Digital Age with the personal computer revolution fathered by DRI's Gary Kildall and the recognition of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for commoditizing PCs into "the software equivalent of fast food". The emergence of biotechnology is covered here, as is Ted Turner's introduction of "24-hour electronic news", Joan Cooney's Sesame Street, hip-hop, eBay, and Google.

Evans makes some unsurprising conclusions - persistence is a definite requirement as is a "make it work" mentality, and many ended up in debt or destitute in the process. There is apparently no character requirement as several were not particularly moral characters and abrasive to those who hard to work with them. But they delivered...and Evans enthusiastically celebrates their creative spirits. This is a terrifically educational book for not only adults but also children as a way to inspire them to tap into their own ideas.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Innovative Society October 9, 2004

By Anne Griffin

Format:Hardcover

They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine, by Harold Evans with Gail Buckland and David Lefer. The title of this innovative book describes the essence of the American character: that undaunted, entrepreneurial, practical, and above all productive spirit. Evans distinguishes between invention and innovation. Inventions are many, he argues, but they do not always result in innovations, which change the way we live. The book is replete with examples of original inventions which would have been destined for the wastebins of history had it not been for innovators who recognized, and developed, their potential. The chapter on Raymond Damadian and the development of the MRI is especially impressive. The book is remarkable for its breadth and depth of detail.

Evans, former editor of The London Times and author, most recently, of The American Century, was aided in this enterprise by Gail Buckland, a distinguished photographic historian, and David Lefer, an investigative journalist.