Book description
Charles Mason (1728 -1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British Surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, in an updated eighteenth-century novel featuring Native Americans and frontier folk,…
Why read it?
1 author picked Mason & Dixon as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I love this novel’s lush language, its wordplay, and the fun of the story. Pynchon’s descriptions of nature are reminiscent of Bierstadt’s paintings of nature as a sacred space. Combine this with the density of detail about science, cartography, and America in the late 1700s, and what results is a complex telling of the creation of a line with huge consequences, such as its use to define the North and the South during the Civil War.
Pynchon’s irony and satire imply more than what is said, using map-making, to cite just one example, as a way to talk about how…
From Steve's list on the invention of nature.
If you love Mason & Dixon...
The High House
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Want books like Mason & Dixon?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Mason & Dixon.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,210
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Mason & Dixon, you might also like...
Aggressor
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
