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The Race Underground
Doug Most
Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway
St. Martin's Press
February 2014
On Sale: February 4, 2014
416 pages
ISBN: 0312591322
EAN: 9780312591328
Kindle: B00EGJE39A
Hardcover / e-Book
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Hardcover (February 2015)
Non-Fiction History
In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and
New York grew more congested, the streets became clogged
with plodding, horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of
1888 crippled the entire northeast, a solution had to be
found. Two brothers from one of the nation's great
families—Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William
Collins Whitney of New York—pursued the dream of his city
digging America's first subway, and the great race was on.
The competition between Boston and New York played out in an
era not unlike our own, one of economic upheaval,
life-changing innovations, class warfare, bitter political
tensions, and the question of America’s place in the
world. The Race Underground is peopled with the
famous, like Boss Tweed, Grover Cleveland and Thomas Edison,
and the not-so-famous, from brilliant engineers to the
countless "sandhogs" who shoveled, hoisted and blasted
their way into the earth’s crust, sometimes losing their
lives in the construction of the tunnels. Doug Most
chronicles the science of the subway, looks at the centuries
of fears people overcame about traveling underground and
tells a story as exciting as any ever ripped from the pages
of U.S. history. The Race Underground is a great American
saga of two rival American cities, their rich, powerful and
sometimes corrupt interests, and an invention that changed
the lives of millions.
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