Photo: Edwin Remsberg/AlamyCould there be a more opportune moment for an authoritative book on the border crisis? No, not that border, and not today’s crisis, but the dispute that once raged over where Pennsylvania ended and Maryland began. That colonial-era quarrel cooled only when the expanse was surveyed and mapped in the 1760s by the Englishmen Charles Mason (1728-86) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-79). Grab a Copy Mason-Dixon: Crucible of the Nation By Edward G. Gray Harvard University Press 456 pages We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site. Yet as the historian Edward G. Gray observes in his ambitious and richly detailed “Mason-Dixon,” the survey initially meant to address but one issue: a long-contested border between British territories in America.

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Persons: Edwin Remsberg, Charles Mason, Jeremiah Dixon, Mason, Dixon, Edward G, Barnes, Jim Crow, Gray Organizations: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Gray Harvard University Press, Noble, Dixon Locations: Pennsylvania, Maryland, North, America