Synopses & Reviews
The building of the Erie Canal, like the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal, is one of the greatest and most riveting stories of American ingenuity. Best-selling author Peter Bernstein presents the story of the canal's construction against the larger tableau of America in the first quarter-century of the 1800s. Examining the social, political, and economic ramifications of this mammoth project, Bernstein demonstrates how the canal's creation helped prevent the dismemberment of the American empire and knit the sinews of the American industrial revolution. Featuring a rich cast of characters, including not only political visionaries like Washington, Jefferson, van Buren, and the architect's most powerful champion, Governor DeWitt Clinton, but also a huge platoon of Irish diggers as well as the canal's first travelers, reveals that the twenty-first-century themes of urbanization, economic growth, and globalization can all be traced to the first great macroengineering venture of American history.
Synopsis
A sweeping work of history by Peter L. Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters recounts the revolutionary conception, construction, and completion of the Erie Canal, one of the greatest engineering projects ever undertaken and the crucial link between the Atlantic states and the bounties of the western lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. This stupendous project was a daunting challenge at every turn, for the financiers and politicians as well as the would-be engineers. With its emphasis on technological ingenuity, global economics, financial skills, and America's changing role in the world, Wedding of the Waters is a story for our own times.
Synopsis
The history of the Erie Canal is a riveting story of American ingenuity. A great project that Thomas Jefferson judged to be "little short of madness," and that others compared with going to the moon, soon turned into one of the most successful and influential public investments in American history.
In Wedding of the Waters, best-selling author Peter L. Bernstein recounts the canal's creation within the larger tableau of a youthful America in the first quarter-century of the 1800s. Leaders of the fledgling nation had quickly recognized that the Appalachian mountain range was a formidable obstacle to uniting the Atlantic states with the vast lands of the west. A pathway for commerce as well as travel was critical to the security and expansion of the Revolution's unprecedented achievement. Gripped by the same fever that had driven explorers such as Hudson and Champlain, a motley assortment of politicians, surveyors, and would-be engineers set out to build a complex structure of a type few of them had ever actually seen, let alone built or operated: a manmade waterway cut through the mountains to traverse the 363 miles between Lake Erie and the Hudson River. By linking the seas to the interior and the interior to the seas, these pioneers ultimately connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Bernstein examines the social ramifications, political squabbles, and economic risks and returns of this mammoth project. He goes on to demonstrate how the canal's creation helped bind the western settlers in the new lands to their fellow Americans in the original colonies, knitted the sinews of the American industrial revolution, and even influenced profound economic change in Europe.
Featuring a rich cast of characters that includes political visionaries like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin van Buren; the canal's most powerful champions, Governor DeWitt Clinton and Gouverneur Morris; and a huge platoon of Irish and American diggers, Wedding of the Waters reveals that the twenty-first-century themes of urbanization, economic growth, and globalization can all be traced to the first great macroengineering venture of American history.
Synopsis
"One corner of the great American panorama enlarged to highlight starry-eyed visionaries, political machinations, indefatigable ingenuity, and cockeyed optimism."--
About the Author
Peter L. Bernstein's books include the worldwide bestseller Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Bernstein is also an economic consultant and publisher of Economics and Portfolio Strategy, a semimonthly letter for institutional investors.