Nothing Like It in the World

Rating:
Summary: A minor work
Review: Ambrose's book seems cobbled-together. He indicates in the "Acknowledgements" section that the idea for the subject came from his editor, and a good deal of the research appears to have been done by others.

There are disconcerting repetitions in the work, such as the recycling of a quote of General Sherman within 40 pages (cf. pgs. 226 and 266), virtually identical descriptions of UP rail-laying (cf. pgs. 180 and 276)and telegraph-pole laying (cf. pgs. 257 - 314-15). This suggests a lack of attention either by the writer (if, indeed, it was Ambrose throughout) or by the editor, or both.

It is unclear that this work was necessary in that Dee Brown's "Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow", as a nonscholarly history of the railroad, was at least as good, and perhaps better. Prof. Bain's "Empire Express" is the definitive work in this area for the time being.

Rating:
Summary: Shame, shame on you Mr. Ambrose
Review: As usual Ambrose tells an interesting story in his own reckless eclectic way. He is no doubt a highly popular story teller buy he has outdone himself with this self proclaimed railroad history. Ambrose admits to reading many of the previously written histories before he decided the world needed his take on what really happened. He holds the work of Maury Klein's "Union Pacific" and George Kraus's "High Road to Promontory" in the highest regard, as he should, and then goes on to copy most of his facts from other authors work. With what little original research his staff did for him he has managed to misinterpret much of it and has so embellished the story that it reads more like a novel. His book is so full of errors, misinterpretations and made up stories that it cannot be considered a good railroad history. Imagine his description "500 kegs" of powder (20,000 lbs) used per day in Bloomer Cut, an excavation only 800 feet long and so narrow that it could only accomodate forty working men and tells that it would take months to complete.

His description of the Chinese hanging over a cliff at Cape Horn, suspended in reed baskets, with four gromments, painted with red symbols,drilling holes in granite is without foundation and accepted by most railroad historians as a myth that has been accepted as fact by earlier writers. Ambrose has taken this mythical description from other lesser know histories and has accepted it as fact. The evidence does not bear out this tale. Any reader truly interested in the history of the building of our first transcontinental railroad would be better served by reading the two books he mentions above. If a reader is not interested in the details of a well documented railroad history than he should pay more attention to the historical novels that abound. Ambrose has come close with "Nothing Like It In The World."

Rating:
Summary: Another New Book on Transcontinental Railroad Much Better!
Review: Both as a graduate student writing a thesis on Western U.S. history and as a long-time railroad history buff, I found Stephen Ambrose's new book a major disappointment. As other reviewers have stated, the mistakes were distracting and the research was far below the norm for an established history scholar like Ambrose. A much better new book on the construction of the transcontinental railroad is David Howard Bain's "Empire Express: The First Transcontinental Railroad." Bain, a history professor at Middlebury College, spent 14 years researching his subject and writing his book and his scholarship shows on every page. His book is very long (816 pages), but well-written and very readable. It also has 45 pages of detailed endnotes and an extensive bibliography documenting his use of primary sources. A footnote to the publication of both of these new books is the ongoing research into the Central Pacific Railroad and "Big Four" power Colis P. Huntington conducted by noted "New West" historian Richard White (author of "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own"). After an October lecture on the topic, White indicated that he would not publish his work for three or four more years because he knew that the Ambrose book would "corner the market" on the topic of the transcontinental railroad no matter how good it was!

Rating:
Summary: not only the tunnel makers were boring
Review: as a long time fan of stephen ambrose i looked forward eagerly to this book. what a disappointment. he constantly repeats himself from page to page, listing again and again the items carried by trains, the method of laying track, the size of the country - everything but a swift paced narration of one of the great feats of engineering. maybe ambrose should get back to interviewing servicemen and leave the writing of history to more qualified historians.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth your time
Review: Given Amrose's stature as one of America's leading historians, it was almost embarassing reading this work. Perhaps the only thing more embarassing is seeing people like Newt Gingrich labeling the work a "Brilliant Description of a Heroic Tale." Let me say up front that I have read other works by Ambrose, and have generally enjoyed them. This, however, is a gross exception. Besides the sloppy writing, Ambrose's scholarship is clearly lacking. He presents direct quotes from major figures without adequate justification, and presents numerous factual errors. Ambrose also seems to gloss over many of the atrocities of the process of building the railroad, such as the treatment of ethnic workers and the Native American population. Essentially the gist of the book is "America is great...This railroad helped make America great...Some bad things happened along the way, but oh well we're still great." The saddest aspect of all regarding this book is that because of Ambrose's stature readers will accept all that he says as fact, which is clearly not true.

Rating:
Summary: So Many Miles, So Little Time
Review: When we're talking about a major undertaking such as building the Nation's transcontinental railroad one of the hardest challenges to capture in print is the sequencing of events. Ambrose does a better than respectable job in this regard. Many people have had a hard time grasping that more was going on in this country during the Civil War than just the Civil War. This project is a perfect example. Stephen Ambrose does a nice job of tying the events as they unfolded on the railroad to the overall events of the Nation. He also does a nice job of giving the rightful due to Theodore Judah. Judah was the engineer and visionary that firmly believed that a railroad could be built across the Sierra Nevada's but never lived long enough to see that occur. Unfortunately that vision did not extend to the treachery that he would experience among his fellow businessmen (both the Central Pacific and Union Pacific) in converting the Nation's treasures to their personal wellbeing. I also enjoyed learning about the role Brigham Young and his Mormon follows played in the effort.

As with all of Ambrose's books there are sufficient anecdotes mixed in to the historical facts to keep the readers attention. While there are other books which address the facts of the railroads construction none do it with the smooth flow of this book.

Rating:
Summary: There was nothing like it!
Review: At one point in the book Ambrose tells us that railroad historians are prone to exaggerate. I may be a railroad historian (he cites me in a footnote), but it is no exaggeration to say that this may well be the worst book ever written about the first American transcontinental railroad. True, Ambrose does tell the great story of a monumental event. And he even gets some of it right: two rival companies starting from either end and meeting in the middle. But the errors that fill these pages destroy any value the book may possess.

Ambrose admitted in the introduction that he knew nothing about the subject. Is it any surprise then that he uncritically accepted and repeats fables about the construction of this railroad? But Ambrose can take credit for many original mistakes. He moves the California gold discovery site to the west of Sacramento, has the Humboldt River rise in northeast Utah, and stretches the Forty-Mile Desert to 100 miles. Theodore Judah is mistakenly credited with building the suspension bridge at Niagara Falls. Central Pacific construction supervisor J.H.Strobridge is presented making decisions for the rival Union Pacific.

Some mistakes--like the eight-foot long bunk cars for the workers, or the stories repeated in different chapters--might be the result of poor editing and proof reading. But other statements make one wonder if even the author read this book before sending it to the printer. Perhaps the most ludicrous image in the book is Ambrose's description of Central Pacific workers drilling holes in the granite for blasting. He tells us men standing on step ladders pounded away with sledge hammers on a long drill held steady by three men--one holding it as high as he could reach, another in the middle, and the third down by his toes. All this to produce a hole one and a half feet deep! If this really happened (and I seriously doubt it), anyone smart enough to bore a tunnel would figure out that one could cut the drill into thirds and drill three holes with the same number of men in the same time (and have fewer injuries from men falling off ladders).

But the book's greatest affront is its cavalier disregard of scholarship. Ambrose invents a brother for Mark Hopkins to take Charles Crocker's place as CP director. Statements from good primary sources are misquoted or presented out of context. One quote from a Mark Hopkins letter is so seriously rewritten as to be meaningless. And these are passed off as authentic quotations, apparently to make the work appear well researched. A line from a photo caption in a secondary source of little historic value is actually presented as the very words of Charles Crocker himself.

Ambrose should be embarassed by this book. Especially so in light of his recent essay in an October 2000 issue of Forbes ASAP in which he implies that he can be trusted as a seeker and teller of the truth of our past. This book is not well crafted. It is not well researched. Saddly, children will read this; teachers will teach this. "Saddly", because this book tells a story that is like nothing that ever happened in the real world.

Perhaps someday we will learn that a rough first draft was sent to the printers by mistake and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: This is an excellent general overview of the transcontinental railroad, but will not satisfy the dedicated 19th-century history buff. An appetizer, not a main course dish.

Rating:
Summary: Good insights
Review: The editorial style is pretty choppy. However, Ambrose does an excellent job of giving information. The story is complete and the level of research that done is very deep. The human nature of hope, greed, legacy, and corruption is clearly shown. This book shows the opening of the west by Americans shown not as The White Satan as is popular in history books today, nor as The White Savior as was popular in the past, but has human beings intent on a goal not comprehending how it would change the country forever.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Description of a Heroic Tale.
Review: If you have been looking for a Christmas gift for a friend who enjoys reading you can stop right here. Ambrose may be the best narrator of the American story in our generation, and this book will fit very nicely next to his studies of D-Day (D-Day June 6, 1944 : The Climactic Battle of World War II) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West) as a brilliant description of a heroic tale.

Ambrose is particularly helpful because he blends together the technology that made the transcontinental railroad possible, the courageous visionaries who thought it through, the politics and lobbying that made it financially possible, The Irish and Chinese laborers who did the great bulk of the work, and the daring, high risk entrepreneurs who turned their dream of a nation united-by-rail into reality.

This book is also a useful reminder to its modern audience that much of American success has been a public-private partnership. In building the railroad, the Army played a key role in scouting the West and protecting the rail crews, and it profited from the railroad through dramatically lowered costs in time and money for moving forces and sustaining them. The government played the most critical role by providing finances and incentives. Without those public contributions the railroad could not have been built for at least another generation. Similarly, the government paid for another very important and related development at the time, the transcontinental telegraph.

On the other hand, the entrepreneurs at both the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads were vital in providing the drive, ingenuity and determination to get the railroads built. The same amount of money they contributed, if spent through a public bureaucracy, would not have gotten the railroad built. In fact, even a vastly greater amount of money spent through a public bureaucracy would not have built the railroad as rapidly as these entrepreneurs were able to build it.

Ambrose also makes clear that the railroad was an instrument of transformational change. Combined with the telegraph it dramatically shortened distances and lowered costs, which provides an interesting and useful context for many of the changes we are experiencing today because it revolutionized the lives of average people.

It took a nation to build a transcontinental country, but private individuals profited immensely in both time and money from the investment once it was made. The rise of the modern American economy and the creation of enormous industrial and agricultural wealth were both by-products of this remarkable achievement.

This is a book that reminds you of the intense optimism and spirit of practical achievement which have been at the heart of the American culture for the last three centuries. It will renew your understanding and appreciation of why this country attracts people from across the planet and then makes them glad they got here.