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The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor

Amazon.com Price:  $13.48 (as of 16/04/2019 04:49 PST- Details)

Description

“Randel is ceaselessly fascinating, and Holloway’s biography tells his life with great skill.”―Steve Weinberg, USA Today

John Randel Jr. (1787–1865) was once an eccentric and flamboyant surveyor. Renowned for his inventiveness in addition to for his bombast and irascibility, Randel was once central to Manhattan’s development but died in financial ruin. Telling Randel’s engrossing and dramatic life story for the first time, this eye-opening biography introduces an unheralded pioneer of American engineering and mapmaking.

Charged with “gridding” what was once then an undeveloped, hilly island, Randel recorded the contours of Manhattan down to the rocks on its shores. He was once obsessed with accuracy and steeped in the values of the Enlightenment, in which math and science promised dominion over nature. The result was once a series of maps, astonishing in their detail and precision, which undergird our knowledge about the island lately. Throughout his varied career Randel created surveying devices, designed an early elevated subway, and proposed a controversial alternative route for the Erie Canal―winning him admirers and enemies.

The Measure of Manhattan is more than just the life of an unrecognized engineer. It’s about the ways in which surveying and cartography changed the ground beneath our feet. Bringing Randel’s story into the present, Holloway travels with up to date surveyors and scientists trying to envision Manhattan as a wild island once again. Illustrated with dozens of historical images and antique maps, The Measure of Manhattan is an absorbing story of an interesting man that captures the era when Manhattan―indeed, all the country―still appeared new, the moment before canals and railroads helped draw a grid across the American landscape.

53 illustrations

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