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Railroaded The Transcontinentals And The Making Of Modern America
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Download or read book Railroaded written by Richard White and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize "A powerful book, crowded with telling details and shrewd observations." —Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review The transcontinental railroads were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating economic panics. Their dependence on public largesse drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, remade the landscape of the West, and opened new ways of life and work. Their discriminatory rates sparked a new antimonopoly politics. The transcontinentals were pivotal actors in the making of modern America, but the triumphal myths of the golden spike, Robber Barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.
Download or read book Railroaded written by Richard White and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, incisive history of the transcontinental railroads and how they transformed America in the decades after the Civil War. The transcontinental railroads of the late nineteenth century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the U.S. economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life. Their discriminatory rates sparked broad opposition and a new antimonopoly politics. With characteristic originality, range, and authority, Richard White shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.
Book Synopsis Railroads and the American People by : H. Roger Grant
Download or read book Railroads and the American People written by H. Roger Grant and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] wealth of vignettes and more than 100 black-and-white illustrations . . . Does a fine job of humanizing the iron horse” (The Wall Street Journal). In this social history of the impact of railroads on American life, H. Roger Grant concentrates on the railroad’s “golden age,” from 1830 to 1930. He explores four fundamental topics—trains and travel, train stations, railroads and community life, and the legacy of railroading in America—illustrating each with carefully chosen period illustrations. Grant recalls the lasting memories left by train travel, both of luxurious Pullman cars and the grit and grind of coal-powered locals. He discusses the important role railroads played for towns and cities across America, not only for the access they provided to distant places and distant markets but also for the depots that were a focus of community life, and reviews the lasting heritage of the railroads in our culture today. This is “an engaging book of train stories” from one of railroading’s finest historians (Choice). “Highly recommended to train buffs and others in love with early railroading.” —Library Journal “With plenty of detail, Grant brings a bygone era back to life, addressing everything from social and commercial appeal, racial and gender issues, safety concerns, and leaps in technology . . . A work that can appeal to both casual and hardcore enthusiasts.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Book Synopsis The Making of Modern America by : Gary Donaldson
Download or read book The Making of Modern America written by Gary Donaldson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Dr. Gary A. Donaldson's highly successful textbook The Making of Modern America, introduces students to the cultural, social and political paths the United States has traveled from the end of WWII to the present day. While deftly cataloguing the sweeping changes and major events in America from "Dewey Defeats Truman" through the election of our first black President, this newly updated edition never loses touch with that American history taking place at the level of the people. This edition details not just the United States' rich cultural history, but elegantly repositions it as integral to our understanding of any portion of this country's past. Donaldson provides a factual foundation for students and then pushes them to interpret those facts, framing the discussions essential to any complete study of American history. The Making of Modern America, Second Edition is updated to include: --An expanded chapter titled "America After the New Millenium" which more retrospectively and completely details the 21st century's first decade. --A new chapter titled "The Second Bush and Obama: From the War on Terrorism to the Audacity of Hope" updating readers on the calamitous end to President George W. Bush's second term, the Obama administration's first term challenges and the Great Recession. --Newly revised readings each profiling an historical event, speech or figure--Lee Harvey Oswald to Bill Gates to Condoleeza Rice-- at the conclusion of each chapter.
Book Synopsis Empire Express by : David Haward Bain
Download or read book Empire Express written by David Haward Bain and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 1432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Civil War, the building of the transcontinental railroad was the nineteenth century's most transformative event. Beginning in 1842 with a visionary's dream to span the continent with twin bands of iron, 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. From self--made entrepreneurs such as the Union Pacific's Thomas Durant and era--defining figures such as President Lincoln to the thousands of laborers whose backbreaking work made the railroad possible, this extraordinary narrative summons an astonishing array of voices to give new dimension not only to this epic endeavor but also to the culture, political struggles, and social conflicts of an unforgettable period in American history.
Book Synopsis Railroads of Meridian by : J. Parker Lamb
Download or read book Railroads of Meridian written by J. Parker Lamb and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Lively, well-written and informative . . . It will be of great interest to fans of railroads in the deep South and their motive power and operations.” —Railfan & Railroad This generously illustrated narrative follows the evolution of dozens of separate railroads in the Meridian, Mississippi, area from the destruction of the town’s rail facilities in the 1850s through the current era of large-scale consolidation. Presently, there are only seven mega-size rail systems in the United States, three of which serve Meridian, making it an important junction on one of the nation’s four major transcontinental routes. The recent creation of a nationally prominent high-speed freight line between Meridian and Shreveport, the “Meridian Speedway,” has allowed the Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern, and Norfolk Southern railroads to offer the shortest rail route across the continent for Asia-US-Europe transportation. “This volume [is] an excellent presentation, in addition to being a railroad history story that ends on a positive, upbeat note.” —Michigan Railfan “An excellent contribution to the history of railroads in the South. Southern railroading in general has been a chronically neglected subject.” —Herbert H. Harwood, Jr., author of The Lake Shore Electric Railway Story “Chronicles Meridian’s intriguing 155-year history as a center of railroad activity.” —The Meridian Star
Download or read book The Iron Way written by William G. Thomas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How railroads both united and divided us: “Integrates military and social history…a must-read for students, scholars and enthusiasts alike.”—Civil War Monitor Beginning with Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad, and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869, this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation, one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear on railroads, the Confederate South, slavery, and the Civil War era, based on groundbreaking research in digitized sources never available before. The Iron Way revises our ideas about the emergence of modern America and the role of the railroads in shaping the sectional conflict. Both the North and the South invested in railroads to serve their larger purposes, Thomas contends. Though railroads are often cited as a major factor in the Union’s victory, he shows that they were also essential to the formation of “the South” as a unified region. He discusses the many—and sometimes unexpected—effects of railroad expansion, and proposes that America’s great railroads became an important symbolic touchstone for the nation’s vision of itself. “In this provocative and deeply researched book, William G. Thomas follows the railroad into virtually every aspect of Civil War history, showing how it influenced everything from slavery’s antebellum expansion to emancipation and segregation—from guerrilla warfare to grand strategy. At every step, Thomas challenges old assumptions and finds new connections on this much-traveled historical landscape."—T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
Download or read book Empire's Tracks written by Manu Karuka and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire’s Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.
Book Synopsis The Republic for Which It Stands by : Richard White
Download or read book The Republic for Which It Stands written by Richard White and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multivolume history of the American nation. In the newest volume in the series, The Republic for Which It Stands, acclaimed historian Richard White offers a fresh and integrated interpretation of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age as the seedbed of modern America. At the end of the Civil War the leaders and citizens of the victorious North envisioned the country's future as a free-labor republic, with a homogenous citizenry, both black and white. The South and West were to be reconstructed in the image of the North. Thirty years later Americans occupied an unimagined world. The unity that the Civil War supposedly secured had proved ephemeral. The country was larger, richer, and more extensive, but also more diverse. Life spans were shorter, and physical well-being had diminished, due to disease and hazardous working conditions. Independent producers had become wage earners. The country was Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant, and increasingly urban and industrial. The "dangerous" classes of the very rich and poor expanded, and deep differences -- ethnic, racial, religious, economic, and political -- divided society. The corruption that gave the Gilded Age its name was pervasive. These challenges also brought vigorous efforts to secure economic, moral, and cultural reforms. Real change -- technological, cultural, and political -- proliferated from below more than emerging from political leadership. Americans, mining their own traditions and borrowing ideas, produced creative possibilities for overcoming the crises that threatened their country. In a work as dramatic and colorful as the era it covers, White narrates the conflicts and paradoxes of these decades of disorienting change and mounting unrest, out of which emerged a modern nation whose characteristics resonate with the present day.
Book Synopsis Railroads of Hoboken and Jersey City by : Kenneth French
Download or read book Railroads of Hoboken and Jersey City written by Kenneth French and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002-02-19 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over two hundred historical photographs, Railroads of Hoboken and Jersey City explores the cultural and commercial effects of railway travel in two important New Jersey cities. Because of their unique location directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Hoboken and Jersey City have long been centers of transportation activity. When the railway industry was booming in the early twentieth century, four major passenger terminals dotted the left bank of the Hudson from the Jersey Central to the Pennsylvania to the Erie to the Lackawanna. Thousands of people streamed through these terminals every day to the ferries that then took them across the river to New York City. Additionally, tons of freight were brought through the vast train yards along the waterfront. Railroads of Hoboken and Jersey City tells the history of the railroads between the mid-1800s and the 1970s. It also explores how the once vibrant waterfronts of Hoboken and Jersey City went through tremendous decline and how, over time, the waterfront has been restored and redeveloped. New residential and commercial buildings have sprouted along the old Pennsylvania and Erie properties, the Lackawanna Terminal has been restored, and the Central Railroad Terminal is now part of Liberty State Park, one of New Jersey's most popular tourist destinations.
Book Synopsis Living in the Depot by : H. Roger Grant
Download or read book Living in the Depot written by H. Roger Grant and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis From the River to the Sea by : John Sedgwick
Download or read book From the River to the Sea written by John Sedgwick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Riveting...A great read, full of colorful characters and outrageous confrontations back when the west was still wild.” —George R.R. Martin A propulsive and panoramic history of one of the most dramatic stories never told—the greatest railroad war of all time, fought by the daring leaders of the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande to seize, control, and create the American West. It is difficult to imagine now, but for all its gorgeous scenery, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While the West was advertised as a paradise on earth to citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile—until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation. Railroad companies soon became the rulers of western expansion, choosing routes, creating brand-new railroad towns, and building up remote settlements like Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, and El Paso into proper cities. But thinning federal grants left the routes incomplete, an opportunity that two brash new railroad men, armed with private investments and determination to build an empire across the Southwest clear to the Pacific, soon seized, leading to the greatest railroad war in American history. In From the River to the Sea, bestselling author John Sedgwick recounts, in vivid and thrilling detail, the decade-long fight between General William J. Palmer, the Civil War hero leading the “little family” of his Rio Grande, and William Barstow Strong, the hard-nosed manager of the corporate-minded Santa Fe. What begins as an accidental rivalry when the two lines cross in Colorado soon evolves into an all-out battle as each man tries to outdo the other—claiming exclusive routes through mountains, narrow passes, and the richest silver mines in the world; enlisting private armies to protect their land and lawyers to find loopholes; dispatching spies to gain information; and even using the power of the press and incurring the wrath of the God-like Robber Baron Jay Gould—to emerge victorious. By the end of the century, one man will fade into anonymity and disgrace. The other will achieve unparalleled success—and in the process, transform a sleepy backwater of thirty thousand called “Los Angeles” into a booming metropolis that will forever change the United States. Filled with colorful characters and high drama, told at the speed of a locomotive, From the River to the Sea is an unforgettable piece of American history “that seems to demand a big-screen treatment” (The New Yorker).
Book Synopsis Nothing Like It In the World by : Stephen E. Ambrose
Download or read book Nothing Like It In the World written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-11-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.
Book Synopsis The Great Railroad Revolution by : Christian Wolmar
Download or read book The Great Railroad Revolution written by Christian Wolmar and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line -- the first American railroad -- in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europe's, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for America's rise to world-power status. Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them. In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.
Book Synopsis The Idea of America by : Gordon S. Wood
Download or read book The Idea of America written by Gordon S. Wood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American identity is so fluid and not based on any universally shared heritage, we have had to continually return to our nation's founding to understand who we are. In The Idea of America, Wood reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the revolution remains so essential. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution-from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment-and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy. As Wood reveals, while the founders hoped to create a virtuous republic of yeoman farmers and uninterested leaders, they instead gave birth to a sprawling, licentious, and materialistic popular democracy. Wood also traces the origins of American exceptionalism to this period, revealing how the revolutionary generation, despite living in a distant, sparsely populated country, believed itself to be the most enlightened people on earth. The revolution gave Americans their messianic sense of purpose-and perhaps our continued propensity to promote democracy around the world-because the founders believed their colonial rebellion had universal significance for oppressed peoples everywhere. Yet what may seem like audacity in retrospect reflected the fact that in the eighteenth century republicanism was a truly radical ideology-as radical as Marxism would be in the nineteenth-and one that indeed inspired revolutionaries the world over. Today there exists what Wood calls a terrifying gap between us and the founders, such that it requires almost an act of imagination to fully recapture their era. Because we now take our democracy for granted, it is nearly impossible for us to appreciate how deeply the founders feared their grand experiment in liberty could evolve into monarchy or dissolve into licentiousness. Gracefully written and filled with insight, The Idea of America helps us to recapture the fears and hopes of the revolutionary generation and its attempts to translate those ideals into a working democracy. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical Hamilton has sparked new interest in the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers. In addition to Alexander Hamilton, the production also features George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Lafayette, and many more. Look for Gordon's new book, Friends Divided.
Book Synopsis Nothing Succeeds Like Failure by : Steven Conn
Download or read book Nothing Succeeds Like Failure written by Steven Conn and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do business schools actually make good on their promises of "innovative," "outside-the-box" thinking to train business leaders who will put society ahead of money-making? Do they help society by making better business leaders? No, they don't, Steven Conn asserts, and what's more they never have. In throwing down a gauntlet on the business of business schools, Conn's Nothing Succeeds Like Failure examines the frictions, conflicts, and contradictions at the heart of these enterprises and details the way business schools have failed to resolve them. Beginning with founding of the Wharton School in 1881, Conn measures these schools' aspirations against their actual accomplishments and tells the full and disappointing history of missed opportunities, unmet aspirations, and educational mistakes. Conn then poses a set of crucial questions about the role and function of American business schools. The results aren't pretty. Posing a set of crucial questions about the function of American business schools, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure is pugnacious and controversial. Deeply researched and fun to read, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure argues that the impressive façades of business school buildings resemble nothing so much as collegiate versions of Oz. Conn pulls back the curtain to reveal a story of failure to meet the expectations of the public, their missions, their graduates, and their own lofty aspirations of producing moral and ethical business leaders.
Book Synopsis The Railroad, what it Is, what it Does by : John H. Armstrong
Download or read book The Railroad, what it Is, what it Does written by John H. Armstrong and published by Simmons-Boardman Books, Incorporated. This book was released on 1990 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populäre Eisenbahnliteratur.
