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Nothing Like It in the World - Stephen E Ambrose (CD)
Title: Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror Title: Nothing Like It in the World Author: Stephen E Ambrose Genre: History, United States Format: 6 CDs (Abridged) Synopsis: In this account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage, Stephen E. Ambrose offers an historical successor to his universally acclaimed Undaunted Courage. Nothing Like It in the World is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise comes to life. The U.S. government pitted two companies -- the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads -- against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. At its peak, the work force approached the size of Civil War armies, with as many as 15,000 workers on each line. The surveyors, the men who picked the route, living off buffalo, deer, and antelope. In building a railroad, there is only one decisive spot -- the end of the track. Nothing like this great work had ever been seen in the world when the last spike, a golden one, was driven in Promontory Peak, Utah, in 1869, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific tracks were joined. Ambrose writes with power and eloquence about the brave men -- the famous and the unheralded, ordinary men doing the extraordinary -- who accomplished the spectacular feat that made the continent into a nation. Review: Choice (January 1, 2001) Ambrose has selected the epic story of the construction of the transcontinental railroad as the subject for his latest book. If a topic has ever been studied by scholars, it is the building of the Union Pacific-Central Pacific railroads, which in 1869 opened the continent to steam-car civilization. An array of excellent studies already exists, including Maury Klein's volume Union Pacific: Birth of a Railroad, 1862-1892 (1987). What Ambrose contributes is social history. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of firsthand accounts by laborers and other "common people," but Ambrose has incorporated as much as possible in his effort to tell the human side of the construction story. Generally, this is a highly readable book, the result of a breezy writing style. Ambrose covers well the cast of major participants and offers the flavor of surveying, construction, and early operations. There are a number of minor historical errors, but they do not mar the telling of what arguably was the greatest building project in the US during the 19th century. General readers. H. R. Grant; Clemson University