They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Seach Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators

The flourishing of America is the story of an inventive people with a mystic faith in technology, from the early settlers who used windmills as a way of getting water on the Great Plains to the electronic whiz kids of the Internet. Innovation, practical inventiveness, is the main force behind America's preeminence. But there is more to this extraordinary history. Harold Evans traces how the innovators have time and again proved to be democratizers, driven not by greed but by an ambition to be remembered. They translated the nation's political ideals into economic reality.

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. 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.