Book Review - "Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It "

 Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It
              -by Michael J. Trinklein-
        
        Who wants to live in the breakaway territory of Nataqua?  Apparently no women did, so it failed to acquire the population necessary for statehood.  Anyone favor living in “Transylvania”?  It was a failed state, in what would later become Kentucky, proposed by Daniel Boone.  How about the state known as “Chicago”?  You read that last sentence right, the great city of “Chicago” once had aspirations of becoming its’ own state.  This was mostly born out of anger at not having enough representation in the state government (being outvoted by farmers makes one think of revolution).  This book is full of many more cases of states, some crazy (like Boston as a city-state) and others rather logical (such as a better division of Idaho, Washington and Oregon) as well as the details behind the division of the Dakotas, the reoccurring attempts at New Jersey and Maine divisions and the desires of Long Island to separate from New York and become its own state.  “Lost States” is a walk down the popular Historic Lane of What Might-Have-Been.  It is a series of engaging, interesting, funny and surprising tales, all contained within a book less than 200 pages long.  Each “failed state” has the pertinent details behind its creation attempt described and also includes either a map of the period with the state on it, or one of the author’s own creation.  These short little snippets of our forgotten history help to illustrate the parts, politics, population, foreign policy, state and federal governments, environment, human temperament and sheer randomness played in the creation of the country we know today as the “United States of America”.