Review by Choice Review
Douglas offers a detailed overview of railroads in American life. He incorporates mostly secondary materials into a highly readable and wonderfully comprehensive account of railroading. Douglas covers a plethora of topics, including development of the iron horse, role of the depot in community life, the public image of the corporation, long-distance and commuter train travel, and railroads in literature and the arts. Few have attempted what Douglas has achieved. He is much more successful than is Albro Martin, in his study, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection & Rebirth of a Vital American Force (1992), at conveying what the flanged wheel meant to people. The one unfortunate aspect of Douglas's work is that it fails, at times, to incorporate the latest and best scholarship. He accepts, for example, some of the "Robber Baron" nonsense, hardly appropriate in light of recent biographies of Jay Gould, James J. Hill, and James Joy. Modest footnotes, but a first-rate bibliography and index. Community college, undergraduate, and general readers. H. R. Grant; University of Akron
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
An integral part of the mythology as well as history of American life, the railroad is also one of America's most powerful symbols. The railroad unified the states, promoted trade and growth, was noisy, exciting, and adventurous, as well as powerful, exotic, and practical. In short, it was everything young America was and more. Douglas takes on the U.S. rail system with passion, not only chronicling its fascinating history but also shattering the romance associated with it by telling tales of corruption, monopolies, robber barons, and exploitation. Even though he is clearly disillusioned with the practices of the rail companies, he is clearly equally fascinated with the culture of trains. It is the tension between these attitudes that gives the book its real interest, especially since Douglas incorporates so much historical detail that, at times, it becomes tedious. Train aficionados will, of course, still enjoy it. Those with a lesser love for the subject stand to learn a lot from it about how the railways shaped the nation. ~--Mary Ellen Sullivan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Douglas (English/Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; The Smart Magazines, p. 706; Women of the 20s, 1986) returns to the fascinating lore of the American railroad, a subject he first explored in microcosm with Rail City: Chicago USA (not reviewed). This social history, however, details its vision on a larger canvas. Douglas touches more lightly on the seismic socioeconomic effects of railroads on modern life than does either Nicholas Faith in The World the Railways Made (p. 1132) or Albro Martin in Railroads Triumphant (p. 1327). The first half of his narrative covers much the same ground as other conventional histories of this great 19th-century invention, including its development of previously unsettled areas, the problem-plagued building of the transcontinental railroad, the shenanigans of robber barons such as ``Commodore'' Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew, and Jay Gould, and the swelling anger of farmers and reformers over the railroad titans' arrogance. But it's the second half here that really shows ``why the railroad became so deeply buried in our national consciousness.'' There are intriguing discussions of the amenities enjoyed by middle-class and wealthy passengers; the way in which the uniformity of railroad schedules bred corresponding uniformity in riders; the reason why railroad stations like Grand Central Station were precursors of today's malls; the continuing preoccupation of country-music singers with the rail, begun with Jimmy Rodgers (himself a former railroad employee); and the rise, decline, and resurrection of model railroads and toy trains (at their ebb point, products of the beloved Lionel Co. were being made in Tijuana). Without losing sight of its subject's often troubled past, this lively social history vividly reminds us why the railroad continues to inspire nostalgia in Americans even as they bypass it for newer forms of transportation. (Thirty-six b&w photographs.)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
