Literature
was born the same year I was (and,
for that matter, Luxe Beat Magazine
Editor-in-Chief Sherrie Wilkolaski),
1970. This was the beginning of
“The Decade of Nightmares” (to use
Philip Jenkins’ title) and at the same
time, “It Seemed Like Nothing
Happened” (Peter N. Carroll’s title),
and whatever else was going on
(Watergate, the end of the Vietnam
War, the hostage situation in Iran,
Three Mile-Island), the Metric
System was going to happen here,
dammit! As President Gerald Ford
famously boasted, “America is miles
ahead when it comes to the metric
system!” Yogi Berra could not have
said it better himself.
Part of the charm of this book is
Marciano’s balanced but not boring
approach. He’s lived in France, Italy
and Canada (all metric countries),
and was raised on a farm in New
Jersey (which is a foreign land, too,
but not metric), so he has no
proverbial, clichéd axe to grind. And
in place of a lot of boring theories,
he brings to life the men (and a few
women) who fought over what
system would eventually triumph.
In the fever-pitch of
However, like many metoric rises and
overnight successes, whether they
be the Cosmos or the Metric System,
most go into a shooting-star fall.
In the case of the Metric System,
President Reagan, to prove he wasn’t
afraid to take axe to the Budget
when it came to fat, decided to cut
the U.S. Metric Association out of
the government. Ironically, the USMA
still exists—and is even growing—
as a non-governmental agency. And
once this was done, a lot of people
started wondering aloud why,
exactly, we needed two forms of
measurement, especially if Uncle
Sam wasn’t going to MAKE us do it.
But Marciano does a better job of
summing this up, “I could never feel
Celsius”. La mot juste. In addition
to epiphanies like this, the book
produces a simply superb section of
colour-plates and black-and-white
photos, all of which are art-gallery
quality. Further, the book, once you
get used to its pace, really reads.
After all, you start to wonder, “How
on earth are we going to get from
1786 to 2014 in 300 pages?”
Marciano does a masterful job.
This isn’t Marciano’s first time at
the dance, far from it. He had success
with two books on word origins,
Anonyponymous and Toponymity, and
prior to that, gave his grandfather’s
(Ludwig Bemelmans) Madeline a whole
new lease on life with Madeline and
the Cats of Rome, Madeline Says
Merci, Madeline at the Zoo, Madeline
and an Old House in Paris, Madeline
in America, and Madeline’s Tea-Party,
all of which he illustrated as well.
However, if you are waiting for
Madeline And The Metric System—
don’t hold your breath; “There will
be no more Madeline books”,
Marciano says.
and coinage was all the rage, and (2)
coming up with a decimal system we
still use today: our dollar currency
(after all, our dimes, dollars, etc. are
based on tens—nickels and quarters
not withstanding).
IMAGES COURTESY OF BLOOMSBURY
those 1970s salad-days, when the
Schoolhouse Rock Saturday morning
videos featured how “cool” the
metric system was, one could have
believed that we were going metric.
After all, the U.S. had not only just
adopted soccer—another completely
foreign concept--