Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century

Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century
Author: Stephen B. Goddard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd); (October 1996)
Description: Paperback
ISBN: 0226300439

No one nowadays salutes the name of Tom MacDonald, but this road construction czar and federal bureaucrat single-mindedly changed the landscape of the U.S. By the time his 34 years of promoting the automobile ended in 1953, the iron horse was a nag limping into the boneyard, and the designs for U.S. autobahns by MacDonald's Bureau of Public Roads were ready to cut through and wall off cities and interstates, begun in 1956, were just around the corner. The result, traffic jams and railroads living on subsidized life support, is an unsung revolution whose concealed obviousness in the everyday is akin to looking for the nose on one's face: it's there but hard to see. So the triumph of the car calls for an enthusiastic scholar and bard who also sings the dirge for lost railroads. That Goddard is. In the process of disinterring MacDonald and others, he reveals his zest for and immersion in his subject and writes with anecdotal richness about the politics and wastrel economics surrounding the car--and he could have written a second volume on its cultural drawbacks. This will grab the policy-interested reader; the masses stuck in lonely gridlock can listen if it ever becomes an audiobook.

More Info/Buy This Item | Rate/Vote for This Item | Report Broken Link
(Added: 19-Jan-2003) - Hits: 330 Rating: 0 Votes: 0

Prices shown were accurate at the time the product was listed. Our suppliers may occasionally revise product pricing. You will be shown the current price before you place your order. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy and current information, we are not responsible for price changes and/or typographical errors.

RailroadBookstore.Com

Search our railroad books