| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828–1965. By Mark Aldrich. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. xviii, 446 pp. $59.95, ISBN 0-8018-8236-2.)
Few historians would rank transportation safety very high on a list of essential subjects in their discipline. But perhaps this is a mistake. Professor Mark Aldrich's study of railroad accidents shows that the carnage reveals important insights about many prominent historical issues, including labor, accident law, and the connection between business and technological change. Even broader concerns, such as the perception of risk in industrial society and the balance sheet of capitalism itself, are clarified in Aldrich's wide-ranging work.	1
Most of Death Rode the Rails is a painstaking account of railroad casualties during the long period between the 1820s and the 1960s. Readers get a heavy dose of the death and destruction suffered by passengers, employees, and pedestrians. Most impressively, Aldrich provides convincing statistical analysis of extensive tables of data gleaned from public records and contemporary publications. He enlivens the story with hair-raising examples, such as the case of a woman who stuck her head out of a train window just in time to be killed by a station's roof support. One feels confident that Aldrich's careful compilation allows him to evaluate fairly the immense human cost of railroading.	. . .

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