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Summary: HAS AUTHOR HEARD OF CANADA!
Review: Pierre Berton, a Canadian author, born in the Yukon, wrote a similar book several years ago about the construction of the CANADIAN TRANS CONTINENTAL RAILWAY. It's existence makes the claim of uniqueness of the U.S. achievement a joke!
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Summary: Hard Going On The Rails
Review: I'll finish this because the information is valuable but it doesn't come alive as it should. Also the book is poorly edited, with many undramatic repetitions (Ambrose has already stated a dozen times that the builders' mentaily was just to "nail" the track down, and that any shoddy work could be fixed later, and I'm only 1/3 of the way into the story!). The effort is worthwhile as history but a plodding read due to lack of style and imagination. And I mean this as a sincere fan who will buy more of Ambrose' books as they come, but they should come slower. Take your time, next time, please!
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Summary: A Monumental Work
Review: Stephen Ambrose is one of my favorite American historians, and I always purchase the books he writes. This latest one is an excellent addition to his literary output, and I enjoyed it very much. He doesn't go into the sometimes excruciating detail I found in "Empire Express" which I read a few months ago, and that's fine with me. Occasionally less is more, and the emphasis on the work itself, rather than the financial dealings, was welcome. Both books, coming out so close together, told a comprehensive story, and each one gave me different and additional information. The earlier work, despite its name, was a "local", but this new one by Ambrose was an "express".
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Summary: A Factual Account of a Mighty Project
Review: On learning of the appearance of this book I sent away for it with high hopes. I expected a work of the same sweep and ambition as Donald McCullough's two splendid histories of other great American projects, "The Great Bridge" (The Brooklyn Bridge) and "The Path between the Seas" (The Panama Canal). The story of the construction of the first trans-continental railway has the same features as these other mega-undertakings - unprecedented technical and organisational challenges, unbounded financial and political chicanery, straight old-fashioned heroism and drama, high social and historic impact and an almost limitless cast of larger than life characters. It is therefore a disappointment to report that the present work, though it tells the story and covers all the relevant facts, has none of the pace, colour and interest of McCullough's works. The present history gives the impression of being all but overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available. Huge amounts of facts and data, interspersed with brief quotes and extracts from first-hand accounts, are presented, but the narrative remains a dull one. The book is at its most successful in its pen-portraits of the major players (but why is Stanford the only member of "The Big Four" not to be delineated?) and it does come to life in spurts - as when describing how particularly daunting engineering challenges were overcome - the blasting of the Cape Horn road-bed in the Sierra Nevada being a case in point. The account of the mechanics of the Central Pacific's track-laying in the final days before the historic junction at Promontory Summit is similarly exciting. These high points serve however to emphasise the opportunities that are missed in providing more extended coverage of other equally exciting episodes. One would welcome knowing much more about the quite hair-raising Indian attacks on the Union Pacific, these including derailments and train-burnings, and more also on the techniques of timber trestle construction in extreme conditions. Financial skulduggery is another feature of the story but the book outlines enough to confuse, yet not to enlighten. Having said this, the work does serve to give an overview of the enterprise, with all the salient features covered and a fine selection of photographs. The definitive popular narrative history of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific epics does however remain to be written.
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Summary: His usual best!
Review: The one thing that I enjoy most from Ambrose's works is the fact that he brings a human side to his books. You don't just read about facts from history, instead you read of people that populated the time and how they dealt with issues at hand. This book is no exception. Ambrose filled it with insights into the unique characters who were the only ones capable of executing such a feat. This is definitely an enjoyable book that gives deep and interesting insight into a fascinating subject.
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Summary: Disappointing
Review: A fan of Ambrose, I was disappointed in this book. Sure, the railroad was monumental and the personalities involved were strong, but I didn't have to be reminded of this every page or two. Ambrose's continual "gee whiz, isn't this magnificent!" attitude grew tiresome. Usually a more detached historian, Ambrose came up a little short with this one (though I recognize the standard he established with other works is awfully high).
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Summary: Nothing Like It In The World
Review: I liked much of the material in this book but many aspects of this book, as a historical work and a serious book troubled me.1) The maps, which should be a key to understanding the territory and terrain are very inadequate and in one case, completely wrong. As important as the tunnels, cuts and bridges where to the project I think there location should have been noted on the maps. As important as grade was I would have put contour lines on the California and Utah maps. 2) One of the maps, entitled "California" describes the California Summit region in the Sierras, but it is in the chapter on the Pomontory Summit in Utah. That the map is hundreds of pages beyond its topic, comes as no small disappointment after trying to picture the California terrian. 3) The material is often repetative. 4) There is very little background on material and railroad technology that enabled the project. At the time of transconinential railroad project, railroads were a revolutionary technology. It was only because of relatively recent developments in steel, steam engines that railroads even existed as a technology. I would have appreciated an introductory chapter on the development of railroads. 5) The degree to which this project was a success is insufficiently supported by material in the book. I think the concluding chapter should have included material on comparisons of the amounts of passenger and freight traffic before and after the completion of the railroad. What little material there is on this subject isn't representative of much research.
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Summary: Our First Government-Sponsored Disruptive Technology
Review: This book is an important contribution to our understanding of the ways to combine entrepreneurship with free markets and government sponsorship to establish nationally-advantageous disruptive technologies ahead of their time. Reading this book made me realize that building the transcontinental railroad in the United States was the prototype for the many successful experiments with Government-led innovation in new technologies (such as the more recent developments of atomic energy, biotechnology, and the Internet) that provided important economic and social advantages. Although I have read much other material about the building of the transcontinental railroad before, this was the first time that the scale and audacity of the achievement fully sunk in. Professor Ambrose has written a landmark book here that will be mined by economic historians and government policy makers for decades to come! Here are some of the implications of the new railroad. The time it took to cross the country dropped from weeks to a week, while the danger went from high to minimal. The cost dropped by around 85 percent, as well. The cost to ship a letter dropped by over 95 percent. Freight costs dropped even more, and vast new markets were opened. Billions of dollars in economic value were created for farm lands and mines near the route that could now ship their output. More significantly, the rapid development of a continental nation could proceed two decades before this would otherwise have occurred. Interestingly, the original concept was even grander than that. The overland route through the United States was intended to become a land bridge for Europe and Asia to trade with one another instead of going around the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The Suez Canal soon denied this opportunity by providing cheaper transport by sea through the Mediterranean to the Middle East. I had forgotten that there was no significant domestic market that needed the transcontinental railroad when it was first conceived. This construction was the ultimate example of the concept of "build it and they will come." In many ways, this was a bigger gamble than setting up a dot com company would be today. Hand-in-hand with the railroad went the telegraph, so that passengers were soon able to send and receive messages while traveling east and west. This was the early version of the cell phone. The development of the railroad was funded with loans from Government bonds and real estate grants along the rights-of-way. These funds were paid against achievement, and with deadlines. As a result, the work progressed like a race rather than a sober development. In fact, much of the final track had to be redone. The Government was eventually repaid all of its principal and interest (much like the Chrysler bailout in the 1980s). The land cost the Government nothing, so the net tax benefits were enormous. There were some shenanigans. Congressmen were given favorable deals on public stock in the development companies. The equivalent of junk bonds were floated and swapped in complex transactions. The Credit Mobilier was an example of innovation in finance that was not to be repeated until the great trusts were established at the end of the nineteenth century. The deal with Congress had to be redone all the time to keep the two competing companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, in business. This was entrepreneurship much like the early days of the airline industry. Professor Ambrose does an amazing job of giving you a perspective from many vantage points. Near the beginning of the story, you have candidate Abraham Lincoln in a chance meeting in 1859 with Grenville Dodge, who did the surveying to establish the best route through the mountains. The Civil War looms large as key events take place as the Union faces key battles. Yet the transcontinental vision lived on. Unlike many history books, this one gives you a sense of what it was like to be a worker on one of the railroads. The economic perspective applies to the use of technology to solve problems, as tunneling went from using blasting powder to nitroglycerine. Where labor was cheap enough, plans were changed for how to construct road beds. Anyone whose ancestor was one of the many Chinese, Irish or Mormon people who did the actual labor will come away with a renewed sense of pride for their contributions. These perspectives include the politicians, the generals, the entrepreneurs, the financiers, the engineers, the surveyers, the road graders, the track layers, the Native Americans, and the settlers. There is a substantial section on the role of Brigham Young and the Mormons in the final development of the railroad that will fascinate all those who would like to know more about the West. The transcontinental railroad is a tough subject to write about. Many of the participants did not keep written records, so this approach to social history has less to work with than occurs in the 20th century. The task of getting through the mountains was highly similar from one tough section to another, and has the potential to bore the reader. I loved the many themes that Professor Ambrose used to connect the fragmented story together such as the periods of extended rainy and snowy winter weather in 1867, and how progress was affected. There are many wonderful photographs of the people and the construction process, that are well worth the price of the book and which I commend to you. I agree with Professor Ambrose's summation for the book, "Together, the transcontinental railroad and the telegraph made modern America possible." Certainly, the economic development of the next forty years would have been greatly retarded without these two technologies. After you have finished reading this book, I suggest that you think about how and where we can repeat this process to accelerate economic development in the future. For example, would a similar approach to providing incentives for curing diseases with genetically influenced causes be worthwhile? Or, how about using biotechnology to expand the effectiveness of humans in some fundamental way, such as in thinking or relating to one another? We have the scientific potential to make important strides now. Which ones should we go after? In The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, the case is made in the afterword for accelerating the rate of human colonization in space as a way to improve human progress. What do you think? Enjoy faster progress!
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Summary: Choose another book
Review: As a history and railroad buff, I found this book very disappointing. Ambrose takes the bombastic approach to history and infers that anything American has to be the best. For example, in the Introduction he says that this project far surpasses the building of the Canadian Pacific and the Trans Siberian. Even though these railways were two and three times the size, through tougher terrain and with climates that make US seem a tropical paradise. Somewhere out there there has to be a book that takes a deeper look at this exciting period of history.
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Summary: What a disappointment
Review: After "Undaunted Courage," I was anxious to read Ambrose's account of the Transcontinental Railroad. While the last chapter was compelling, the rest of the book suffered from poor editing. I have to question the author's strategy of separating the stories of each railroad into alternating chapters. Yes, many personalities and grand geography made for a complex history. But retelling in this "back and forth" format creates to much repetition of detail.
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