Customer Reviews

The Horseshoe Curve

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Mr. McIlnay has written a very good history of events concerning the railroad Horseshoe Curve near Altoona Pennsylvania. The Horseshoe Curve was a great instance of civil engineering in America. Mr. McIlnay's book is history at its best - very well written, very informative, well referenced, and of great interest.

Mr. McIlnay divides his book in three sections. The first two sections concern World War II. One is of the Nazi saboteurs in America in 1942. These saboteurs had Horseshoe Curve as their target as well as other sites. The second section concerns the restriction and sometimes internment of designated enemy aliens (aliens who originally came from countries the United States was at war with). Both well written sections are quite relevant to issues surrounding the present war on terror as well as being very thorough and interesting.

However, the most interesting section concerns the building of the Horseshoe Curve for the Pennsylvania railroad. The Pennsylvania transportation system in the 1830's and 1840's lagged behind the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Maryland and the Erie Canal in New York as a means of east west transport. This lag changed due to J. R. Thomson of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the engineers and managers he hired. The Horseshoe Curve and uninterrupted railline of the Pennsylvania Railroad through the Alleghenies was the result. Mr. McIlnay tells this very interesting story like a novel but with ample detail for the historical specialist to learn much.

This book is absolute must for anyone even remotely interested in American history.

This is one of the most poorly organized books I have ever read. The title claims that the book will be about "sabotage and subversion" in Altoona. It discusses neither.

The book is organized into three sections, the first two of which are interrelated. In the first section, the author discusses the 1942 Nazi plot to destroy several sites located on American soil - all of which were critical to the Allied war effort and one of which included Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, Pennsylvania. The author carefully details the preparation of the Nazi sabotage effort, its failed implementation, and the succeeding trial and conviction of the saboteurs. It makes for interesting reading, but it repeats material that has been covered in detail in other secondary sources - a fact which is quickly revealed upon a review of the endnotes and bibliography.

The second section purports to investigate at the effects of the failed Nazi sabotage on the city of Altoona. In 1942, Altoona was a city teeming with immigrants, many of whom originally hailed from Germany and Italy, with whom the United States was at war. Thus, the author sought to explore how the United States government treated potential "alien enemies" in Altoona. The author admits that, when it came to this question, he hit a brick wall, having failed to find anyone in the area who knew anything of consequence about any roundup of "alien enemies" in the Altoona area. Switching gears, the author discusses the treatment of German and Italian "alien enemies" on a national scale, including a review of the criteria used to classify immigrants as alien enemies and the living conditions to which they were subjected once classified and detained as such.

The final section of the book provides a cursory history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, including the conditions that led to its founding, the building of the railroad, and finally the death of its visionary president, J. Edgar Thomson, in 1874. The decision to traverse the Alleghenies via the Horseshoe Curve warrants only a brief mention.

All three sections are interesting to read. That said, none of the sections present any new information that could not have already been found in other available secondary sources. This reader got the impression that the author wanted to publish a book, but didn't have enough material for any single subject - but did have enough if he could somehow combine three subjects. The result was a hodgepodge without any coherent thesis.

One pet peeve about the book was the way in which the publisher rendered numeric values. For example, on page 324, we have the sentence "The Pennsylvania Railroad began in Harrisburg, which was three hundred ten feet above sea level, and ran one hundred thirty-five miles to Altoona, at eleven hundred sixty-eight feet above tide." I have never seen a publisher spell out numeric values to such an extent, and it detracted from the reading experience, and this reader has to stop and convert, for example, "eleven hundred sixty-eight" to"1168.'

All in all, this is a good book if you're looking for light reading on three disparate topics. If you're looking for a detailed analysis with a coherent thesis, then look elsewhere.

This book is mostly about: 8 germans who came to the US during WWII on a sabotage mission that was a complete failure, a review of how the US treats enemy aliens and saboteurs, and a history of railroading in Central Pennsylvania. The Horseshoe Curve was on the list of possible targets of the failed sabotage mission and some enemy aliens were arrested in Altoona, as well as other cities in the US. Little detail was provided on the Altoona arrests and the saboteurs never got close to damaging any of their targets, including Horseshoe Curve. I was hoping to read about an intriguing plot involving the german population in Altoona but it didn't happen. I did find the account of the failed sabotage mission interesting along with chapters on the struggle to build a railroad through the Allegheny Mountains.