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Cargando... Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern Americapor Richard White
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Long ago I read an essay by Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) that argued that among the transcontinental railroads, only the Great Northern was a success because it did not accept any subsidies from the Federal government. The other railroads were corrupt, poorly managed boondoggles that survived only because the government propped them up. Rand was making a libertarian case against state interference in business. White likewise argues that the railroads were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme, although he comes at it from the left with a strong post-2008 perspective. Playing with house money and supported by public bailouts, White argues that the transcontinental railroad system was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme to route money from the public treasury into the pockets of select investors. And they were select investors who conned others (including their former pals) when it suited them. The amoral, apolitical railroads backed whatever best served the financial interests of their investors. As where previous generations of historians saw the completion of the transcontinental railroad as a triumph of American progress, White sees a complicated, bloated, unnecessary, and unsustainable system that sapped the treasury for decades. It was, in short, a national tragedy in his telling. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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This work is a history of the transcontinental railroads and how they transformed America in the decades after the Civil War. The transcontinental railroads of the late nineteenth century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the U.S. economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life. Their discriminatory rates sparked broad opposition and a new antimonopoly politics. With characteristic originality, range, and authority, Richard White shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)385.0973Social sciences Commerce, Communications, Transportation Trains and Railroads Subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography North America United StatesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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The protagonists (perhaps, the villains?) of this work are the capitalists who lead the railroad companies including Charles Francis Adams, Jay Cooke, Collis P. Huntington, Tom Scott, Leland Stafford, and Henry Villard. But the greatness of this book is that it looks at the transcontinental railroads from many perspectives including construction workers, railroad workers, anti-monopolists, local politicians, union organizers, and Native Americans. Some of the best parts of this book are the "A Railroad Life" mini-chapters that offer a case study of an individual's life experiences with the railroad. White also writes in a engaging, sometimes snarky, style that make reading about 19th century finance and corruption fun!
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