They made America
by Harold Evans · first published 2004
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Readable narrative history of American inventors and innovators, with chapters on individual figures. It is a quick, engaging read for anyone interested in how key technologies came about.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
An illustrated history of American innovators--some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating-- by the author of the bestselling The American Century.
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Mentions per year
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…anyone in management or scaling a startup. History, and why the world is the way it is today: Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond The Birth of Plenty, William Bernstein They Made America, Harold Evans -- fantastic history book with each chapter telling the detailed story of a businessperson or inventor in U.S. history
on “Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?” ↗…Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem." I think this is a good method. See for instance this book From steam engine to search engine http://www.amazon.com/They-Made-America-Centuries-Innovators... listing 2 centuries of innovations.
on “Principles of Innovation” ↗…year. IMHO one of the best books ever written on the creative process, no matter what you're creating. In Defense of Food - Best criticism of the problems with reductionist "nutrition-ism" I've read. They Made America - Good, quick history of some of America's most revolutionary inventors, businessmen and women.
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?” ↗> Killdall viewed it as a serious question, at the least. The best source I've seen for Kildall's viewpoint is his chapter in the book They Made America. It quotes sections on this dispute from his unpublished memoir (his children later allowed the Computer History Museum to publicly release a portion of the book, but not the part that They Made America…
on “GitHub – DOS 1.0: Transcription of Tim Paterson's DOS Printouts” ↗…and skill. It also accounts for a small fraction of the wealthy. Carnegie wrote explicitly against hard work and in favor of the value of networks. I'm sure the other robber barons agreed. Read "They Made America" and see page after page of brilliant inventors of the last 200 years who died broke, but whose inventions produced fortunes for other well positioned people.
on “Working Hard. The biggest bullshit.” ↗…Kildall, who Evans justifiably described as "the true founder of the personal computer revolution and the father of PC software" in a book published three years ago. In a chapter devoted to Kildall in Evans' They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators, Evans related how Paterson "[took] 'a ride on' Kildall's operating system, appropriated the 'look and feel' of [Kildall's] CP/M…
on “The mean age of high-tech founders is 43, economists say” ↗…final few days of his life, as he nurses his injury and tries to recall to a friend, a woman, all that has happened. The play, which was praised, after reading, by Sir Harold Evans, the late author of They Made America, which includes an incisive chapter on Kildall, and is ready for production - Steve Hauk.
on “Stewart Cheifet, creator of The Computer Chronicles, dead at 87” ↗A necklace, a lamp, a dress, the 'inventor's almanac' book 'They Made America,' and several socks, the limiting factor for startups.
on “Ask HN: So HNers, whatd'ya get for Christmas?” ↗