AMERICA THE INGENIOUS
How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World
By Kevin Baker
Illustrated by Chris Dent
262 pp. Artisan. $29.95.
How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World
By Kevin Baker
Illustrated by Chris Dent
262 pp. Artisan. $29.95.
Kevin Baker offers a collection of easy, fast-to-read vignettes illustrating the inventiveness of the American people, mainly from the Industrial Revolution to today. In a now popular genre established by Neil MacGregor’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” he focuses on 76 innovations or creations, ranging from the Erie Canal to jazz, from the transcontinental railroad to the microprocessor. Each selection gets about 1,000-1,500 words and, in feature journalism style, provides a what, who, when, why and how of the innovation and its impact. Accompanied by sidebar factoids and cartoonish line drawings, the book seems aimed at young adults, serving up interesting bits of history in a Wiki-lite fashion.
The accounts are straightforward and informative without much in-depth context or treatment of historical or biographical nuance — and there’s no mistaking this for a scholarly treatment. Why 76 cases of ingenuity? No real reason. And why these? Pretty arbitrary. The selections are broken up into categories — roaming, building, curing, playing and so on — which is fair enough. But one wonders about the absence of some key categories of American creativity — like electing, financing, protesting, educating, conserving, cooking and loving.
The categories thus composed obviate the need for a chronological progression, but even thematically, the narrative connection between one selection and another is unclear. Within categories there are puzzling omissions. History ends too soon in “Fighting” — there are no F-15s or drones. With regard to “Powering,” i.e., energy, nuclear is absent. “Producing,” i.e., agriculture, ends curiously, or perhaps ironically, with channeling irrigation from farmland to meeting the needs of a growing Los Angeles. There’s a curious category — “Women Inventors” — with only two selections, but women’s contributions edge in at a few other points — perhaps expectedly with the bra, dishwasher and diapers, but also informatively with Kevlar and the Laserphaco probe. Equal rights might also have made a good choice. As a native New Yorker I was personally O.K. with the bias toward that city — but objectively the inclusion of the Polo Grounds, Penn Station, the subway, Coney Island, and the Hudson and East River tunnels seems a bit too parochial.
What explains the American penchant for creativity, invention and innovation? Baker asserts it’s because the United States is the original and exemplary nation of modernity — founded and energized by the very idea of ingenuity. As the book’s subtitle suggests, ingenuity is somehow baked into American individualism, national character and social life. Baker sums up the causes of America’s ingenuity in familiar fashion, almost canonical among innovation stump speakers. American ingenuity thrives on the freedom to explore and create, the pursuit of equality of opportunity, the appreciation of teamwork, the orientation to foster public involvement — inviting investors and serving consumers — as well as government encouragement, leadership and patent regulation.
This particular set of qualities has long been part of American self-consciousness, noted especially by de Tocqueville in his insightful study of our “can do” society. Establishing correlations, causality and logical interpretation for why innovation occurs has occupied much social science theory and research — to mixed results. Sometimes invention emerges from quirky, stubborn isolation and greed, and unfortunately sometimes from repressive, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. If America has proved particularly fertile for ingenuity, though, the reasons won’t be found in this pleasant but superficial book.
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