You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Uncle Sam's Locomotives looks at these magnificent locomotives and discusses how and why the designs were chosen, how they related to existing designs, what standardization entailed, and how each performed.".
A “sweeping and grand epic on the renaissance of American railroading” from the Fortune journalist and author of The Men Who Loved Trains (The Baltimore Sun). After decades of covering the railroad industry for Fortune magazine, journalist Rush Loving Jr. offers his unique insider’s view into the many dramas, triumphs, failures, and adventures of the great American railroads. Loving has shared meals and journeys with everyone from the industry’s greatest leaders to conductors, brakemen and even a few hobos. Now, in this fascinating combination of history and memoir, he recalls the many colorful people he’s met on the rails. Loving shares stories he collected in locomotive cabs, business cars, executive suites and even the White House. They paint a compelling, intimate portrait of the railroad industry and its leaders, both inept and visionary. Above all, Loving tells stories of the dedicated men and women who truly love trains and know the industry from the rails up.
When Theodore Dreiser first published Sister Carrie in 1900 it was suppressed for its seamy plot, colloquial language, and immorality—for, as one reviewer put it, its depiction of "the godless side of American life." It was a side of life experienced firsthand by Dreiser, whose own circumstances often paralleled those of his characters in the turbulent, turn-of-the-century era of immigrants, black lynchings, ruthless industrialists, violent labor movements, and the New Woman. This masterful critical biography, the first on Dreiser in more than half a century, is the only study to fully weave Dreiser's literary achievement into the context of his life. Jerome Loving gives us a Dreiser for a...
This account of a doomed enterprise is “an important contribution to both rail and road history, as well as to business history”—photos and maps included (The Lexington Quarterly). Stretching over two hundred miles through Pennsylvania’s most challenging mountain terrain, the South Pennsylvania Railroad would form the heart of a new trunk line, from the East Coast to Pittsburgh and the Midwest. Conceived in 1881 by William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and a group of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia industrialists, it was intended to break the rival Pennsylvania Railroad’s near-monopoly in the region. But the line was within a year of opening when J.P. Morgan brokered a peace treaty that aborted the project and helped bolster his position in the world of finance. The railroad right of way and its tunnels would sit idle for sixty years—before coming to life in the late 1930s as the original section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Based on original letters, documents, diaries, and newspaper reports, The Railroad That Never Was uncovers the truth behind this mysterious railway, one of the most infamous construction projects of the late nineteenth century.
Indian summer, the succession of warm, fair days gracing New England in autumn, is at once a flourishing period signaling the end of fall, a meteorological event, a vernacular cultural construction, and a literary metaphor. In this appealing and elegant book, Sweeting plumbs Indian summer's use in literature as a symbol of second chance, rebirth, or reprieve before the onset of a harsher season. Well researched and charmingly written, Beneath the Second Sun is the first book to systematically treat the history and uses of Indian summer imagery in American life. The author focuses on the ways in which New Englanders have embraced the season, and he places the celebration of the season's beaut...
“The first comprehensive history of the Hocking Valley Railway ever published fills a gap in the literature. Miller has written the definitive history of this railroad,” says Richard Francaviglia, author of Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America's Historic Mining Districts. The Hocking Valley Railway was once Ohio's longest rail line, filled with a seemingly endless string of coal trains. Although coal was the main business, the railroad also carried iron and salt-and kept the finest passenger service in the State of Ohio. Despite the fact that the Hocking Valley was such a large railroad, with a huge economic and social impact, very little is known about it.The Hocking Valley Rai...
“Succeeds admirably as an introductory survey of the early American travel experience”—from the National Book Award-nominated author (Journal of Transport History). What was travel like in the 1880s? Was it easy to get from place to place? Were the rides comfortable? How long did journeys take? Wet Britches and Muddy Boots describes all forms of public transport from canal boats to oceangoing vessels, passenger trains to the overland stage. Trips over long distances often involved several modes of transportation and many days, even weeks. Baggage and sometimes even children were lost en route. Travelers might start out with a walk down to the river to meet a boat for the journey to a t...
Visionary Railroader chronicles the life of a key figure in the history of rail travel in the United States. As president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Jervis Langdon Jr. had the opportunity to put progressive concepts into practice. In 1964, Langdon took charge of the Rock Island, and by the time he left in 1970, he had spearheaded major improvements for this struggling carrier. The same year, he became lead trustee for the bankrupt Penn Central and three years later assumed the presidency. From his role in passing the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 to his work on creating the quasi-public Conrail, Visionary Railroader examines the impact of Langdon's active life with clear text, unique representations of media of the day, and select family photos.
The author, a literary critic and historian, uses over 100 of his own photographs to recall his life-long love of trains.
The photographer shares over 200 images from his sixty-year career covering railroad tourism across the world, plus the stories behind them. In this lavishly illustrated memoir, William D. Middleton invites readers to climb aboard and share with him sixty years of railroad tourism around the globe. Middleton’s award-winning photography has recorded events such as the final days of American Civil War locomotives in Morocco and the start up of the world’s first high-speed railway in Japan. He has photographed such great civil works as Scotland’s Firth of Forth Bridge and the splendid railway station at Haydarpasa on the Asian side of the Bosporus, while closer to home he has been recogni...