They made America : from the steam engine to the search engine : two centuries of innovators

Now available in a text-only paperback edition, "They Made America" is a stirring and supremely readable work of history--a celebration of the entrepreneurial energy that has fueled this nation since its inception.

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

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.”

"The flourishing of America is the story of an inventive people with a mystic faith in technology, from the early settlers who used windmills as a way of getting water on the Great Plains to the electronic whiz kids of the Internet. Innovation, practical inventiveness, is the main force behind America's preeminence. But there is more to this extraordinary history. Harold Evans traces how the innovators have time and again proved to be democratizers, driven not by greed but by an ambition to be remembered. They translated the nation's political ideals into economic reality."--Jacket A history of the United States's major inventors and innovators includes coverage of such figures as Henry and Edsel Ford, cosmetics entrepreneur C. J. Walker, and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in a tie-in to a PBS four-part series that shares lesser-known background information and features lavish duotone and full-color photography. Reprint. 40,000 first printing. An illustrated history of American innovators -- some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating -- by the author of the bestselling The American Century.