Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America

the first edition of edwin danson’s drawing the line, appeared in 2001, four years after thomas pynchon’s hilariously outrageous nearly eight hundred page novel, not quite a resurgence in the interest of mason and dixon, but close.sixteen years later, danson returns with a revised edition. both bibliography and index have been expanded. the appendix has been rewritten, several mathematical charts have been removed, and the text is an essay, with astronomical and mathematical figures, divided in five sections: Astronomy; Longitude, Latitude, and the Shape of the Earth; Surveying Methods; Degrees of Latitude: A Short History; and The Mystery of the Mason-Dixon Mile. The body of the book has increased in chapters, from twenty-one to twenty-three, some chapter titles were changed, every chapter rewritten, factual errors corrected: ‘Even before the division of New Jersey in 1682 …’ now reads ‘Even before the division of New Jersey in 1674 …’ .the british surveyors and astronomers, charles mason and jeremiah dixon, were summoned by the penn brothers, thomas and richard, and lord baltimore to the british colonies on the north american continent, prior to the colonies’ declaration of independence from britain, to draw an accurate boundary line between pennsylvania and maryland, settling an eighty year boundary dispute, ‘to mark, run out, settle, fix, and determine all such parts of the circle, marks, lines, and boundaries as are mentioned in the several articles of agreement or commissions, and are not yet completed.’their task requiring ‘an exactitude requiring precision instruments to calibrate against the celestial bodies.’ … was fraught with cold winters, the savage paxton gang, and reports of pontiac moving eastward. danson included benjamin franklin’s trips back and forth across the atlantic to speak with his masters on colonial issues while finding time in london to spend with inventors and scientists.mason was a meticulous note keeper. danson relied heavily on mason’s journal for the projects mason and dixon worked together.

This relatively short (224 pages of text in my review copy) but highly detailed account of how the Mason Dixon Line came to be will please anyone interested in the histories of America, Britain, or science, but it will be utterly fascinating for people like me with particular interests in southeast Pennsylvania (where I grew up), Maryland (where I live now), and the intellectual achievements of Enlightenment era.Surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were hired by the British government to settle an increasingly violent boundary dispute between colonial Maryland and Pennsylvania. Some of the details of the science (particularly the astronomy) that Mason and Dixon employed to determine where their line should go are beyond my comprehension, but the complexity of it amazed and impressed me. I also learned many new things about the early history of places I thought I knew well (Marcus Hook was a favorite haunt of Blackbeard the pirate?!), and the book showcases lots of interesting personalities--some familiar, like Ben Franklin, and some I hadn’t heard of before, like Thomas Cresap, an almost mythical character who helped turn the Pennsylvania-Maryland border dispute into something close to a war.Since the original version of this book was published in 2000, the author discovered new details about the history of the Mason Dixon Line and the people involved, and that updated information has been incorporated into this revised edition.

This is a new edition of a book first published in 2001. It's a very technical surveying and astronomy presentation, and includes the history of the many previous unsuccessful efforts to settle the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. Colonists from PA and Maryland at first tried to agree to a border and did supporting survey work, but they could never reach agreement. Eventually they hired the very competent Englishmen Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, whose border was eventually accepted. This became perhaps the most significant border in the colonies and in the later United States, separating North from South and eventually, as slavery was gradually abolished in the North, slave states from free. One theory is that the Mason Dixon line is the origin of the word "Dixie" for the South, though there are several other theories, including a currency issued by a New Orleans bank called a "Dix," which was is French for 10, the unit of that currency. While I have a minor in science (physics, biology, and chemistry), I never studied surveying or astronomy, and I found the details presented to be too much detail for me. After reading the book I felt I didn't really know the characters of Mason and Dixon. Perhaps the well known novel by Thomas Pynchon, "Mason and Dixon," would have been better for me to read, or the recent book "The Life and Times of Jeremiah Dixon," by Simon Webb. I'm not aware of a similar monograph on Charles Mason. I gave this book 4 stars due to it's thoroughness and technical accuracy, deducting a star for a bit of dryness in the writing and a lack of a personal dimension in the description of the main characters. If you're just looking for the scientific aspects of surveying the Mason Dixon Line and historical background on how they were selected, this book is for you. If you want more a sense of the personality of these two surveyors and the adventure that must have been found in their surveying perhaps the most significant border in North America, there are other sources that may be more fitting.

If your trigonometry isn't up to much, start with the appendixes that explain some of the science and maths

Great, enjoyable