"Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did."

So said playwright Lillian Hellman. Everything we do or use in modern life had a beginning, often much earlier than expected. When and where did it really happen for the first time? And if that was not an American innovation, when and where did it happen for the first time in the US?

Robertson's Timeline of World and American Firsts supplies the answers in 14,500 entries derived mainly from primary sources or scholarly texts. Chronicling over a thousand years of change, both major and minor, this new publication also explores how the US rose to become the most innovative nation in the world.