Scan barcode
galaxy487's review
2.0
It was ok. Ambrose repeats himself a lot, sometimes whole sentences that he had already written in a previous chapter. Still, it was an ok read and was decently interesting to boot.
librarianonparade's review
4.0
It's hard to appreciate just what a colossal achievement the transcontinental railroad was, from our perspective in the 21st century. In an era when trains, cars, aeroplanes, electricity, nuclear power, the internet, are all taken for granted, a railway seems like a small thing. But in post-Civil War America simply envisaging such a undertaking was considered impossible, let alone building the thing. From East Coast to West, the railroad would eventually unite the country, an important point just a few years after the violent separation of the Civil War.
The statistics alone are incredible: the miles of track laid, the heights the railroad scaled, the tunnels blasted through the mountains, the bridges spanning gorges, the millions of dollars, the thousands of workers. And all this in era when every inch of the railroad was surveyed, dug, built, laid and forged by hand, by the physical labour of Americans, Irish and Chinese.
It's a fascinating period in history, and Ambrose tells it well. The author is best known for his WW2 books, but he should diverge into nineteenth-century history more often. My one criticism is that I wanted to read more about the men on the bottom of the pile, the workers, merchants, prostitutes, gamblers - and less about the bosses at the top. But I suppose that's history for you - sometimes the most interesting people are the ones we know least about.
The statistics alone are incredible: the miles of track laid, the heights the railroad scaled, the tunnels blasted through the mountains, the bridges spanning gorges, the millions of dollars, the thousands of workers. And all this in era when every inch of the railroad was surveyed, dug, built, laid and forged by hand, by the physical labour of Americans, Irish and Chinese.
It's a fascinating period in history, and Ambrose tells it well. The author is best known for his WW2 books, but he should diverge into nineteenth-century history more often. My one criticism is that I wanted to read more about the men on the bottom of the pile, the workers, merchants, prostitutes, gamblers - and less about the bosses at the top. But I suppose that's history for you - sometimes the most interesting people are the ones we know least about.
More...