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The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
W. W. Norton & Company
June 2011
On Sale: May 31, 2011
660 pages ISBN: 0393061264 EAN: 9780393061260 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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. 8 pages
of black-and-white illustrations
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