Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

Bain begins his chronicle of the construction of the 1st Transcontinental Railroad with the idealistic vision of Asa Whitney and ends it with the brutal aftermath of the Credit Mobilier scandal. In between, Bain weaves a sweeping narrative of the titanic struggle to build the Pacific Railroad.Bain touches on every facet of the railroad's construction. He starts his book with a detailed examination of those, like Whitney, who had dreamed of uniting the continent with an East-West railroad since the 1840s. Then he moves to the political battles in Congress that culminated in the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 and the organization of the Central Pacific (charged with building the railroad eastward from Sacramento) and the Union Pacific (charged with building westward from Omaha). Then he narrates the competition that quickly emerges between the two companies as they race for the valuable coal deposits in the Wasatch Canyon, the right to build future railways throughout the West, and the bragging rights of finishing the most astonishing feat of engineering of the 19th Century.Along the way, Bain illustrates the colorful people that built the National Highway: "Doc" Durant, the devious and slick manipulator of the UP boardroom; "Crazy" Judah, the intense visionary who found the way across the Sierra Nevadas but met a tragic end; and Grenville Dodge, the UP's chief engineer who constantly battled the greedy and corrupt in the UP who only sought to make a quick buck.The difference between this book and Ambrose's new book on the Railroad is the focus of the two books. Ambrose emphasizes the Race, seeing it as an adventure and an example of what American ingenuity can accomplish; in this vein, he attempts to see the Railroad's construction more through the eyes of the Chinese and Irish who built the Railroad. Bain, however, gives us a narrative of the behind-the-scenes action that emphasizes the backroom deals and plots that spurred the Railroad to completion as the two companies feverishly attempt to outmaneuver each other for the spoils of the competition; in this vein, Bain gives us more detials of the CP's efforts to gobble up all of the other railroad companies in California and establish a monopoly while Bain also describes the boardroom struggles between the Durant and Ames factions within the UP for control of the company.Bain's book also offers far more detail than Ambrose's. The origins of the Indian conflicts in the West, the politics that shaped the legislation setting down the rules of the game, and the scandals of the 1870s that followed from the corruption and greed of the two companies are examined more closely in "Empire." Unlike Ambrose's book, this is intended to be THE authoritative book on the Pacific Railroad -- and it is.However, Bain's narrative suffers from the minutiae he indulges in, particularly the financing of the road. I started with Ambrose and was so fired up by his spell-binding narrative that I instantly went on to Bain's

As other reviewers have noted, this was history at its best, full of sweeping events and characters bigger than life when viewed from our time period. I have often sat in a bar in the Huntington Hotel which is named "The Big Four" (referring to Huntington himself, Crocker, Stanford, et al) and wondered who these people were and how they accomplished what they did. Now I know. This history must be particularly fascinating to people living in areas described in the book (San Francisco and Sacramento, Omaha, Nebraska (which was totally shaped by the events surrounding the building of the railroad), the Plains area (North Platte, etc.), and Salt Lake City. Unlike prior reviewers, I enjoyed the details surrounding the politics and the financing of this gigantic undertaking, which are essential aspects of the overall success which was eventually attained. I also thought the detail of the book brought to life the plight of the Irish workers of the Union Pacific and the Chinese workers of the Central Pacific. Although lengthy, this is the definitive work on the subject and is a wonderful read (not dry and dusty at all in my opinion), bringing as it does this magnificant undertaking to life to readers from a distance of 140 years. A great accomplishment!

A richly-detailed page-turner with a fascinating cast of characters, some of whom seem straight out of a novel! Elegant writing, well-paced. The scope of this book is vast -- it's about so much more than the building of railroad; it really captures America at that point in history. I was daunted by the book's sheer size when it arrived, but I zoomed through it, and enjoyed each page.

Okay, so I read a lot of history, but very little of it as exciting as the great construction race David Haward Bain documents in this painstakingly researched book. Empire Express is a work of non-fiction, but through Bain's careful and fluid prose and his lavish use of the letters, diaries and telegrams of participants, he achieves a dramatic narrative that many novelists would envy. If you're interested in Rail Road History, it's here. But equally important are the finely drawn characters of the men who built the road -- forerunners of the Robber Barons, their business practices are ironically contemporary. Empire Express is a readable, lucid, account of what it took to build an empire at the dawn of the gilded age and documents the better part of the 19th century in doing so.