Customer Reviews

Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829-1929

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The author uses a unique view point to combine the various aspects of social impacts that the railroads had on American culture. A great many topics are covered from sweeping social behavioral norms, to the logistics of ticketing, to luggage design. The social and cultural viewpoint dominates the normal railroad book themes of business, economy, technology, and governmental regulation. All of these topics are covered but only as they influenced, dictated, or were demanded by the social trends. A major point made is that much of American urban culture today is an unintended consequence of how the railroad industry evolved. Railroads originally seen as the instrument for growing a community's wealth, end up being the instrument of draining both the wealth and population to the major cities. A second major theme is how the railroads enabled and even forced a transient society for people at all income levels. The local communities on which the country's original culture was founded are lost forever.

The writing style is straight forward and interspersed with a good deal of backup information and supporting stories. Not exactly enjoyment reading, but certainly not boring. There was a great deal of duplication of information from chapter to chapter often using the same phrasing. Once, the same quote is used twice on one page. A better editor could have helped the author present the same information in 2/3 the space.

From a railroad perspective there are a few minor oversights, such as giving credit to the Northern Pacific as the pioneer of promoting rail travel for vacations. I believe more research would show they were only attempting to duplicate the Great Northern's success with the "See America First - Glacier National Park" campaign. Such minor oversights in the examples do not invalidate or even lessen the points being made by the author.

As a reference work its organization is not ideal for finding information, but this is a consequence of the social viewpoint. It does have a fairly complete index. As a reference the strong point is the chapter notes (footnotes) and the notes on the sources. I will be using these frequently. However, it does not include a traditional bibliography listing all the references together sorted by title or author.

In summary, I recommend this book for both the casual and serious student of history and railroads. It could even be used as a basis for a class. I am pretty certain hard core "train" fanatics will not like it. This book will be an eye opener for many, and probably should be a required read for anyone trying to get a complete understanding of the cultural transformation that occurred around the turn of the 20th century. I intend to add a copy of this book to my personal library.