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Railroaded: The Transcontinentals And The Making Of Modern America (2011)

by Richard White(Favorite Author)

3.55 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0393061264 (ISBN13: 9780393061260)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: Richard White won the Pulitzer Prize in History for this rather dense, sometimes irreverent, and well researched work on how the 19th Century transcontinental railroads were far from great engineering accomplishments that linked the country, but rather needless destructions of the natural landscape that did little but line the pockets of the wealthy men who financed them.There is a LOT of talk about railroads, their construction, and their financing. White does not hide the fact from the outset what his point of view is. It just seems that the point is hammered home somewhat relentlessly. The book also deals with the Gilded Age, which is one of the less glamorous eras of American history.It is a book that would require the average reader to set up a big bulletin board with... more the names of all the men and the railroads they owned.
review 2: Slightly incoherent prose makes it a bit hard to follow. Not necessarily a huge flaw in non-fiction, but eventually the one-sided portrait got to me. On the balance I'm probably more likely to agree than to contest the author's thesis, but this felt more like a broadside in an argument than an honest attempt to present the facts. (The thesis is that the transcontinental rail companies were bad, and that everyone who ran them was crooked. Which was probably true, but still.) less

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