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This title in other editionsEmpire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroadby David Haward Bain
Synopses & ReviewsFrom Powells.com:The completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10th, 1869 was one of the
defining moments in American history. News of the railroad's completion was simultaneously
broadcast across the country via morse code, and the recently reunited nation
celebrated in unison. This massive construction project had its origins nearly
thirty years prior in the grandiose vision of one Asa Whitney, who first articulated
the idea of building a railroad from Michigan to the Pacific. Like any endeavor
of this scope, though, the motivations to lay track across several thousand miles
of rugged and hostile country were myriad and complex. Greed, power, ambition,
and, yes, grand vision, all played their part. But Empire Express is more
than an excellent history of the men who conceived and built the American railroad.
It is a broad portrait of the United States at a crucial point in its history,
a point at which it was still uncertain just what sort of a nation we intended
to become — and what price we were willing to pay to become it. Eminent historian
David
Haward Bain does an excellent job shedding light on the complex and ambiguous
answers to those questions. Farley, Powells.com Publisher Comments:Beginning in 1842 with a visionary's dream to span the continent with a single railroad line, Empire Express captures three dramatic decades in which the United States effectively doubled in size, fought three wars, and began to discover a new national identity. Culminating in the driving of the Golden Spike in the Utah desert in 1869, which touched off a frenzy of celebration, the narrative ends in 1873 in Washington under the Capitol rotunda, with the crushing fall of a popular politician and the exposure of a powerful, hidden railroad lobby — a scandal, which, for half a year, dominated the press and the country's imagination. Review:"A vast panorama, meticulously researched. Bain never forgets that two strenuously competitive companies were doing the building, one headed east, the other west. Every internal trouble the builders faced — grimly inhospitable terrain, avalanches, Indian battles, keeping track of supplies, and money, always money — was played out against this imperative need to hurry, hurry, hurry. You couldn't even take out time to hate your neighbor, and what a contentious bunch they were, in Bain's definitive telling of the tale." David Lavender, author of The Way To The Western Sea And The Great Persuader Review:"One of the greatest of all American stories has finally found a chronicler up to the task of telling it. David Haward Bain has managed to encompass it all — genuine heroism and brutal dispossession, utopian vision and rampant corruption, technological wonders and war with the elements — in a vivid narrative that no one interested in the American character will want to miss." Geoffrey C. Ward, author of The West, An Illustrated History and co-author (with Ken and Ric Burns) of The Civil War Review:"The building of the Pacific railroad is an epic story, often recounted but never so thoroughly, authoritatively and engagingly as in Empire Express....[This book] is well researched, well written, refreshingly revisionist where the sources indicate, illustrated by well-chosen photographs and studded with beautiful topographical maps indispensible to the construction story. The book promises to endure as the standard history of the Pacific railroad." Robert M. Utley, New York Times Book Review Review:"Empire Express is one of those books that anyone with any interest in railroad history or the American West must acquire and keep close at hand. It is gargantuan, truly towering, and thanks to David Haward Bain's lengthy and painstaking research it is as complete as this subject can ever be. Bain uses the voices of the transcontinental railroad's builders to tell much of this epical tale. Furthermore, to enliven his narrative he brings in contemporary events relative to this great American endeavor." Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Synopsis:Bain draws on his historical/political savvy and his ability to breathe life into history in this saga of the building of the transcontinental railroad--a story which reads like a novel: color, lively, and dramatic. 16 photos & maps. Description:Includes bibliographical references (p. [759]-777) and index. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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