Rails across the Mississippi

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"[The Eads Bridge] has long been recognized as one of the outstanding civil engineering accomplishments of 19th-century America... This volume focuses on the bridge's local political and national business contexts... The research is thorough, the writing excellent." -- Choice "An excellent account of the protracted struggle to ... [create] a permanent rail crossing of the lower Mississippi River at St. Louis... Jackson, an urban planner and historian with expertise in engineering documentation, provides good coverage of all aspects of the bridge story through extensive use of primary sources such as government documents, corporate reports, correspondence of key participants, and contemporary newspapers. The book also contains thirty-four pages of high-quality maps, photographs, and technical drawings." -- Richard W. Barsness, Journal of Illinois History "This book is an economic, political and technological biography of a bridge... Jackson carefully and successfully intertwines these various elements of the bridge's history... Jackson's emphasis on the people associated with the design, financing, and construction of the bridge, and his analysis of the bridge's place in the city's economic history make an interesting read." -- Robert T. Schultz, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society ADVANCE PRAISE "Rails across the Mississippi is a local study of national import. Where previous books on the Eads Bridge have treated it as an artifact of innovative technology, Robert W. Jackson treats it primarily as an artifact of innovative economics, using the bridge to reveal the financial mechanics of emergent industrial capitalism in the Gilded Age. The writing is lucid, the research staggeringly thorough." Howard S. Miller, author of St. Louis in the Gilded Age "An engaging account of the political, financial, and technical challenges behind a great engineering achievement." --Henry Petroski, author of Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America