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 Booklist
If you wear a bra, listen to a radio, have a bank account, or use any of 67 other technologies or business practices that Evans writes about, know that they were commercialized by "innovators," as the author dubs their creators. Biography provides the backbone of Evans' profiles and is well supported by his grasp of the business and social environments operated in by these historical entrepreneurs, who span from steamboat pioneers John Fitch and Robert Fulton to MRI inventor Raymond Damadian, who exemplifies the type Evans extols here. Damadian did not discover nuclear magnetic resonance, but he built and marketed a machine that in some way made life longer or more comfortable for the masses. Ida Rosenthal did it by getting women out of corsets and into her Maidenform bras; Malcolm McLean did it by building SeaLand, the container-shipping company that revolutionized world trade. Eclectic in its range of subjects, this work's wealth of photographs will enhance its popular appeal, as will its incarnation on PBS in November 2004. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


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


About the Author
Harold Evans is the author of the New York Times bestseller The American Century. He was the founding editor of Cond Nast Traveler, editorial director of U.S. News & World Report, and president and publisher of Random House, where he published a record number of bestsellers. He was editor of the London Sunday Times and ofThe Times, and his account of those years, Good Times, Bad Times, was a #1 bestseller in Britain. He lives in New York. Gail Buckland is a historian of photography and the author of numerous books. She is currently a Professor of the History of Photography at the Cooper Union in New York City. David Lefer has worked as an investigative reporter at numerous newspapers, including the New York Daily News and Newsday.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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

FROM THE CRITICS

Dennis Drabelle - The Washington Post

As for They Made America, it seems about as far from fast food as a coffee-table book can be: quirky and satisfying from the first chapter to the last sidebar.

Neil Genzlinger - The New York Times

In They Made America, Sir Harold, the historian, publisher and journalist, follows up his 1998 volume, ''The American Century,'' with absorbing profiles of Americans whose inventiveness and industriousness changed the way human beings live. Read just a few of these portraits and you begin to become dismayed at what you yourself have accomplished in your time on the planet: that is, comparatively nothing. Certainly nothing that compares with the lasting transformations wrought by Samuel Insull (who put cheap electricity into many thousands of homes) or Samuel Morse (whose telegraph liberated communication from the constraints of geography). It's enough to make you throw the book down and plunge headlong into the development of time travel or climate control or anti-aging pills -- anything that might result in a legacy with some heft to it.

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.”

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. (Oct. 12) Forecast: The PBS series and a two-part serial in U.S. News and World Report should add to what will undoubtedly be generous holiday sales for this gift book. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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