stephen ambrose nothing like it in the world

These factors only stressed supply lines that were undependable to begin with. There was, for example, the inclement terrain (like the towering Rockies) and even less clement weather to deal with. Many of these were obvious enough, at least in hindsight. But there were many obstacles that had to be cleared before this could happen. The Golden Spike uniting the two branches was driven in at Promontory Summit in May 1869.

There, rival Union Pacific was inching its way west, trying to outpace Central Pacific in building towards a common midpoint – and the union of the lines. On one end, stemming from Sacramento, the Central Pacific slowly worked its way towards Omaha. Ambrose's account of the construction of the transcontinental railroad begins with the early surveyors who determined the paths of the rails, and moves from there to the capitalists and cronies that oversaw the venture (and tried, illegally, to get rich off of it), and then the hordes of workers who were called in to do the actual grunt work. That said, and although Nothing Like it in the World was an immediate best seller – a testament to Ambrose's accessible prose, and unusual celebrity for an academic – it has been plagued ever since with charges of sloppy research and plagiarism.

As Ambrose himself puts it in the opening line of his book: 'Next to winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery, building the first transcontinental railroad, from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, was the greatest achievement of the American people in the 19th century.' This quote exemplifies both the adulatory tone in which the book is written, and the seriousness with which Ambrose takes his subject. Aside from the text, the book also contains thirty-two pages of black and white photographs of the men and machines that Ambrose discusses, as well as several maps. The book tells the story of the construction of America's first transcontinental railroad in the latter half of the nineteenth century – a feat of engineering almost unimaginable, and wholly unprecedented, at the time. Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869 is a narrative history by Stephen E.

Stephen ambrose nothing like it in the world