The Transcontinental Railroad recounts the construction of the rail link completed at Promontory Summit in 1869. It traces federal land grants and finance, the competing Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies and the engineering challenges of plains, deserts and the Sierra Nevada.
The book gives attention to Chinese, Irish and other labourers whose dangerous work made the project possible. It also examines corruption, environmental change, new markets and the acceleration of military and settler expansion into Native lands, showing that national integration carried profound human costs.
