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Summary: Astronomy, trigonometry, and trans-Atlantic politics
Review: A few years ago, I was kidding around with a high school senior in our school library in northern Illinois, and I quipped, "Well, as Mason said to Dixon, you've got to draw the line somewhere." I expected at least a chuckle in return. The student, academically rated in the top 10% of his class, stared blankly back at me. "Mason and Dixon?" I asked. Nothing. "The Mason-Dixon Line?" Nada. "The border between Pennsylvania and Maryland? The boundary between The North and The South? The whole premise behind the Civil War?" Nope. He had never heard of it. The Line, I mean; of course, he knew about the Civil War.Maybe I took it for granted, since I grew up in a suburb about 25 miles north of the Line, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Line was there, but nobody made a big deal about it. I don't recall being taught anything about it, myself. I made a mental note to someday rectify that omission. When Thomas Pynchon's _Mason & Dixon_ was released, I was ready and interested. Ready and interested, that is, until I spied a copy in a bookstore, randomly opened it, and tried to actually read and understand the words on that single page. Hmmm. I returned the book to its display and allowed it to entice another potential buyer. As soon as Danson's book came out, I was ready and interested in the subject matter once again. And I believe I made the right choice with this one. There's A LOT of trigonometry and technical information in parts, and all of the math teachers in my past wouldn't be a bit surprised that I sort of skimmed over those paragraphs. But the extent of the politics and 18th-century science involved is intriguing. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon had to contend with scientific authorities and governmental offices on both sides of the Atlantic -- not to mention local hostilities between European settlers and native Indians. In spite of a variety of challenges, they were ultimately successful in their mission and got little recognition (and even less pay) for their hard work in the colonial wilderness. My favorite passages in _Drawing the Line_ were in the details surrounding the actual surveying of the PA-MD border, which had to be done in four separate phases. I followed the text along with a road atlas in my lap and could envision some of the familiar terrain. And I nodded at the descriptions of violent thunderstorms and crippling blizzards. Been there, done that ... though certainly not while living in a surveyor's tent. Reading this book will help to answer the inevitable teenager lament, "When would ANYONE ever use trigonometry in real life?" And if you have a hankering to know more about life on the North American East Coast before the Revolution, here's a way to experience it without getting cold and wet. Or scalped.
Rating: 
Summary: Response to Ed Moorehead's review
Review: Drawing the Line was written to appeal to a wide readership - complex astronomy and survey maths are deliberately excluded. Nevertheless it is very gratifying when someone has a go at checking something difficult. Ed Moorehead got 'hung up' on the distance of one degree of latitude at the equator and pole. The book is correct - his understandable confusion arises due to the fact that the Earth is elliptical and not circular and the fact that 'astronomical' verticals do not pass through the centre of the Earth.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much technical information
Review: Edwin Danson's Drawing the Line, How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in US History provides a wealth of informaiton on the development of 18th century surveying equipment. A bit too much for me. The jacket bills this book as the first popular history of the drawing of the Mason/Dixon line. To me, popular history is far more asseccable than the opening chapters of this book. Mr. Danson's work would be very interesting to geographers and surveyor's, but it left me struggling with too much detail about Mason and Dixon's gear and longing for more details on thier lives and personalities. Danson does provide us details on the emense challange that Mason and Dixon faced. There was much more to drawing their famous line picking a starting point and running surveyor's chains in a straight line between Maryland and Pennslyvania. This book provides readers with tantilizing hints about Mason and Dixon that lead one to believe they would be very interesting subjects for a biography, but we get no more about them than one gets from listening to Mark Knofpler's song "Sailing to Philadelphia". Perhaps if Danson had reversed his priorities and provided readers with more about Mason and Dixon and less about their equipment I would have rated this book higher. Still, if you have an interest in map making or surveying or the Mason/Dixon line, Danson's book will inform you, it just doesn't entertain.
Rating:
Summary: Too much technical information
Review: Edwin Danson's Drawing the Line, How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in US History provides a wealth of informaiton on the development of 18th century surveying equipment. A bit too much for me. The jacket bills this book as the first popular history of the drawing of the Mason/Dixon line. To me, popular history is far more asseccable than the opening chapters of this book. Mr. Danson's work would be very interesting to geographers and surveyor's, but it left me struggling with too much detail about Mason and Dixon's gear and longing for more details on thier lives and personalities. Danson does provide us details on the emense challange that Mason and Dixon faced. There was much more to drawing their famous line picking a starting point and running surveyor's chains in a straight line between Maryland and Pennslyvania. This book provides readers with tantilizing hints about Mason and Dixon that lead one to believe they would be very interesting subjects for a biography, but we get no more about them than one gets from listening to Mark Knofpler's song "Sailing to Philadelphia". Perhaps if Danson had reversed his priorities and provided readers with more about Mason and Dixon and less about their equipment I would have rated this book higher. Still, if you have an interest in map making or surveying or the Mason/Dixon line, Danson's book will inform you, it just doesn't entertain.
Rating:
Summary: Response to Ed Moorehead's review
Review: Enjoyed the book very much, but still hung up on the distance equivalents of one degree of latitude at the equator and pole, page 30. At the pole, closer to the center of the earth, the distance should be shorter than at the equator, not longer. In fact, using the radii, I calculate 69.17 miles at the equator and 68.84 miles at the pole. Am I missing something?
The books on Lewis and Clark always leave me with a celestial navigation question which someone may be able to answer for me. Meriwether Lewis was instructed in celestial navigation before heading west. He was to take data at key junctions to establish longitude and latitude. He did, but never reduced the observations to useable data. I never heard if the observations, reduced after the trip, were of any value. Any help?
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Summary: Questions on this and other books
Review: Enjoyed the book very much, but still hung up on the distance equivalents of one degree of latitude at the equator and pole, page 30. At the pole, closer to the center of the earth, the distance should be shorter than at the equator, not longer. In fact, using the radii, I calculate 69.17 miles at the equator and 68.84 miles at the pole. Am I missing something?
The books on Lewis and Clark always leave me with a celestial navigation question which someone may be able to answer for me. Meriwether Lewis was instructed in celestial navigation before heading west. He was to take data at key junctions to establish longitude and latitude. He did, but never reduced the observations to useable data. I never heard if the observations, reduced after the trip, were of any value. Any help?
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Summary: Well written history of the boundary dispute
Review: I found this book very interesting. Both in the facts surrounding the surveying of the Mason-Dixon line and the life of the people living at that time. The descriptions given in the book about the political power and its misuse reminded me that in those terms, things are still the same today. The brutality of some of the people toward others (both here and abroad)is still true today. It was very interesting to note that some of the people who lived such short lives did manage to accomplish quite a lot. The people seemed to endured the elements and harsh weather conditions much better back then also, without complaining. The power of a persons mind to come up with a solution about the boundary dispute and the accuracy that was attained using rather crude instruments(by todays standards)was well worth noticing. Excellant book overall. Would make a good mini-series for Ken Burns to produce.
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Summary: Drawing The Line Review
Review: If you have an interest in American Colonial history and/or the profession of surveying, this is interesting reading.
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Summary: A rare look into the applied astronomy of the 18th century..
Review: Most people have probably heard of the Mason-Dixon line, though they may not be aware of where or exactly what it is. I grew up less than three miles from the famous line that separates Maryland from Pennsylvania, and was aware that there were stone monuments spaced every mile along the boarder - but I had no idea of the origins of this line. Danson weaves the historical backdrop that necessitated the survey and follows Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two British astronomers, as they traveled to the colonies with their telescopes, quadrants, and mathematical expertise. A surveying job such as this required exquisite accuracy in the determination of latitude and longitude - a job for skilled astronomers in their day. For the more technically inclined, appendices are provided that go deeper into the methods surveyors use to shoot the lines. Given the amount of astronomy involved in such a surveying job, I wish the author would have provided more detail about the instruments Dixon and Mason used to accomplish their task. I'm sure it was not Danson's intention to cover this sort of technical instrumentation in detail, but in my (biased) opinion, it would have enhanced the story. Still an excellent book and one any person interested in the history of science should read.
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Summary: Technical treatment of history
Review: Warning: Only mathematicians, cartographers, and astrophysicists are qualified to understand this book! Okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole but it is indicative of the technical detail Danson needs to make his point. The Mason-Dixon line is more about the greed of powerful colonial families, fighting for every square mile of claimed territory than it is about slavery, geography or history. Yes, this same personal greed drove the development of technology. Even the British government got into the act, offering a reward for a better measuring instrument. Even then, the goal was to master naval power, trading, and economic development, not to advance technology. The opening chapters summarize the give and take of English royalty, Catholic and Protestant, and their desire to divide up the New World. All this dithering and bloodshed did produce an agreement on one thing: Unless we can get someone to draw the line somewhere and to everyone's satisfaction, all of the dithering and bloodshed will continue. Mason and Dixon were just the guys they needed. Only this same line of "peace" became the demarcation for the American Civil War two hundred years later. Recommended only for the math-savvy and the hardcore history buffs. Let's hope that there are more than four of you out there...
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