| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Nothing like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869. By Stephen E. Ambrose. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. 431 pp. $28.00, ISBN 0-684-84609-8.)

Stephen E. Ambrose describes here the building of the first transcontinental railroad. He focuses on construction but does not slight the lobbying and financial gymnastics that both roads engaged in. His fans will find it a good, fast-paced, colorful read. 1

Railroad historians may not be as happy. Annoying slips begin with the map inside the front cover, showing Oregon as a territory in 1869, when it was ten years a state; conversely, Brigham Young's Utah is called a state but was not until nineteen years after he died. Young led the Latter-day Saints west from Council Bluffs in 1847, not 1852. N. B. Judd did not become "ambassador" to "Germany" in 1861; such a government did not exist until 1871. The Morrill Act of 1862 chartered the land-grant colleges, not "the great state universities." I-80 crosses I-25, not I-15, in Wyoming. "Coolie" is of Hindi, not "Hindu," origin. Humboldt Wells is in northeastern Nevada, not Utah. Casper, Wyoming, is in the Divide Basin, not in "the Great Basin." The railroads adopted standard time zones in 1883, not 1878. . . .

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