stephen e ambrose nothing like it in the world

There are frequent trips to Washington and New York, where Bain sorts out - as well as anyone could - the furious politicking and intricate financial manipulations of a dozen or so major characters, all of whom he brings to well-documented life in his pages. There are enough crises so that each switch from the eastern to the western struggle heightens the suspense about the fate of the whole endeavor. For much of the book we are flashed back and forth from the drive westward across miles of prairie and mountain to the seemingly impossible task of surmounting the Sierras. But Bain tells a gripping story, never allowing the thoroughness of his research to weigh down his narrative. It's a long book, almost eight hundred pages, twice as long as Nothing Like It. So was Nothing Like It, but Bain's Empire Express was a story not to be missed. I'm glad I did, otherwise I might have read only Ambrose, whose Undaunted Courage, about Lewis and Clark, was a moving story. This gave me no reason to choose one over the other, so I read them both. McNeill's assessment was even-handed: Ambrose is celebratory, highly informed about the technicalities of construction Bain is more thorough and more politically and socially aware of the situation of Indians and workers. Ambrose's Nothing Like It In the World (Simon and Schuster) and David Empire Express (Penguin) in The New York Review of Books (20 September 2001: p. My interest revived recently, however, when I read William H. But it was only a summer romance, and when summer was over I went on to other things. I sensed epic stories, so I entertained myself for the rest of the summer by reading all the books I could find in the local library on the building of the transcontinental railroads. Somebody told me that the 'empire builder' was Jim Hill. Paul where they would turn west and head for the Pacific. All I knew about them was that they were on the way to St.

They had intriguing names: The Great Northern, The Empire Builder. Some years ago, during a long summer vacation in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, I became curious about the trains that daily roared through the town and disappeared up the Mississippi.

Stephen e ambrose nothing like it in the world