| Book Review | Western Historical Quarterly, 32.1

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| Book Review | Western Historical Quarterly, 32.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. By David Haward Bain. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1999. xiii + 797 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

Empire Express tells the history of the origin, surveying, financing, organizing, and building of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States by the Central Pacific and Union Pacific companies during the 1860s. Why, this reviewer wondered, write yet another such history when a dozen or so books on the subject appeared at the time of the centennial of the railroad in 1969--on top of several more in the previous two decades? The answer is that past literature was narrowly focused. Bain's book, it turns out, is the most thoroughly researched, most comprehensive history, and one reasonably well-written. . . .

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