I never thought a book on geography could be funny, but Mark Stein has pulled it off.” - Vogue “A fascinating and wonderfully entertaining account of an often-overlooked oddity of America’s history: how the jigsaw-puzzle layout of the United States emerged. “If you ever wondered why Delaware owns a small portion of the southwest New Jersey coast, the answer is here!” - Library Journal It’s history, it’s geography, it’s comedy, it’s indispensable.” - ANDRO LINKLATER, author of The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity “For anyone who’s been confounded by the largest of all jigsaw puzzles, the one that carved out those fifty weirdly formed states, here is the solution. God bless the panhandles and notches, the West Virginias and Oklahomas.” - Wall Street Journal “Give me the splendid irregularities any day. Adding the fresh lens of local geographic disputes, military skirmishes, and land grabs, Mark Stein shows how the seemingly haphazard puzzle pieces of our nation fit together perfectly.

Packed with fun oddities and trivia, this entertaining guide also reveals the major fault lines of American history, from ideological intrigues and religious intolerance to major territorial acquisitions. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey. How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Even the oddities-the entire state of Maryland(!)-have become so ingrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake? God bless the panhandles and notches, the West Virginias and Oklahomas.' - Wall Street Journal 'Give me the splendid irregularities any day.

Book how the states got their shapes