Reviews
Boundaries: How the Mason-Dixon Line Settled a Family Feud and Divided a Nation by Sally M. Walker
shaniquekee's review against another edition
4.0
A great history of the Mason-Dixon line pitched at a younger audience (e.g. it says that Henry VIII formed the Church of England because of personal and political differences with the Catholic church...*cackles*)
quietjenn's review against another edition
2.0
If I were being 100% literal, I would probably give this one star, because for a great swath of my reading time, I hated this book. But, I respect the amount of research that went into it too much to be so negative. That said, I literally cannot imagine any circumstance in which I recommend this book. And it makes me sad because I think the topic has tremendous potential and, based on a other things that I've read by Walker, she has the ability to make it compelling.
But it just wasn't. At all. Like, I can not emphasize enough how not-readable it was. And I suspect that I am probably more interested in maps and map making than your average reader. But, just bone dry text and awkward placement of side-topics and pretty static illustrative material. Even stuff that should have been exciting - raids! riots! feuds! danger! - was rendered so completely bloodless by the exhaustive detail with which it was recounted (not to mention in pretty staid "first they did this, then they did this and finally they did that"). And the more tedious aspects of surveying fared even worse. I think that there's such a thing as too literal and exacting, especially when writing for a general audience, and this is a prime example of it.
But it just wasn't. At all. Like, I can not emphasize enough how not-readable it was. And I suspect that I am probably more interested in maps and map making than your average reader. But, just bone dry text and awkward placement of side-topics and pretty static illustrative material. Even stuff that should have been exciting - raids! riots! feuds! danger! - was rendered so completely bloodless by the exhaustive detail with which it was recounted (not to mention in pretty staid "first they did this, then they did this and finally they did that"). And the more tedious aspects of surveying fared even worse. I think that there's such a thing as too literal and exacting, especially when writing for a general audience, and this is a prime example of it.
graventy's review against another edition
1.0
Ooof. You would think that the topic would prove an interesting read, but this book turns out to be a very dry nonfiction book. I didn't finish it.
juliusmoose's review
4.0
This is a nice book for children about the Mason-Dixon line, mostly focusing on how and why it was made. The book does kind of kind of gloss over the conflicts between settlers and Indians, but actually less so than I anticipated. It also discusses the significance of the Mason-Dixon line as the boundary between free and slave states, although I would have liked it to talk about that a little more.
The book gave, I think, a pretty good description of the techniques Mason and Dixon used in their surveying, enough that you could feel like you understood what they were doing, without getting bogged down in the actually quite complicated mathematics they were doing.
The book gave, I think, a pretty good description of the techniques Mason and Dixon used in their surveying, enough that you could feel like you understood what they were doing, without getting bogged down in the actually quite complicated mathematics they were doing.
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