I finished an audiobook called Nothing Like it in the World - The Men who Built the Trancontinental Railroad 1863-1869. It's by historian Stephen E. Ambrose, who also wrote a fascinating book about Lewis and Clark.
I enjoyed the story about the transcontinental railroad as an audiobook. It moved quickly and had enough excitement to seem like a novel. Actor Jeffrey DeMunn does an excellent job of reading the book to us with expression and clarity.
Ambrose manages to interweave the first part of railroad story with the concurrent events of the American Civil War. Abe Lincoln not only supported the idea of a transcontinental railroad, he took a personal interest in it and lent government support to it even though a war was going on. After the war ended and Lincoln died, other key figures from the Civil War turned their attention to the railroad, notably U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.
It's a really interesting story.
August 29, 2008
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