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The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
June 2011
On Sale: July 9, 2011
384 pages
ISBN: 0618812415
EAN: 9780618812417
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl and the possibility of escapeβthe U.S. interstate system changed the face of our country. The Big Roads charts the creation of these essential American highways. From the turn-of-the-century car racing entrepreneur who spurred the citizen-led βGood Roadsβ movement, to the handful of driven engineers who conceived of the interstates and how they would workβyears before President Eisenhower knew the plans existedβto the protests that erupted across the nation when highways reached the cities and found people unwilling to be uprooted in the name of progress, Swift follows a winding, fascinating route through twentieth-century American life. How did we get from dirt tracks to expressways, from main streets to off-ramps, from mud to concrete and steel, in less than a century? Through decades of politics, activism, and marvels of engineering, we recognize in our highways the wanderlust, grand scale, and conflicting notions of citizenship and progress that define America.
 Media BuzzTalk of the Nation - September 2, 2011
All Things Considered - July 3, 2011
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