
Railroaded
The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
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Narrated by:
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Paul Woodson
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By:
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Richard White
About this listen
The transcontinental railroads of the late 19th century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the US economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life.
Their discriminatory rates sparked broad opposition and a new antimonopoly politics. With characteristic originality, range, and authority, Richard White shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.
©2011 Richard White (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, and perhaps in the world. During these decades, Americans explored and debated all aspects of politics and constitutionalism - the nature of power, liberty, representation, rights, the division of authority between different spheres of government, sovereignty, judicial authority, and written constitutions.
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Provides Context for Todays Mess
- By Tad on 07-20-24
By: Gordon S. Wood
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The Radicalism of the American Revolution
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize–winning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd."
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Changed the Way I Think
- By Cynthia on 01-04-14
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Atlantic Wars
- From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution
- By: Geoffrey Plank
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In a sweeping account, Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped the experiences of the peoples living in the watershed of the Atlantic Ocean between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Revolution.
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A scattered selection of micro-theses
- By Dylan Becker on 11-01-21
By: Geoffrey Plank
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The Man Without a Face
- The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to its own people and to the world.
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A Preview of Authoritarianism in the USA
- By Jimmy O on 06-08-19
By: Masha Gessen
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Iron Empires
- Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Nicholas Tecoksy
- Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the Transcontinental Railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, America's railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and visionaries. The vicious competition between empire builders such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes; provoked strikes; transformed the nation's geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle....
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History doesn't get any better
- By Philo on 02-06-21
By: Michael Hiltzik
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Stone by Stone
- The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls
- By: Robert M. Thorson
- Narrated by: Robert M. Thorson
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Stone walls tell nothing less than the story of how New England was formed, and in Robert Thorson's hands they live and breathe. Millions of years ago, New England's stones belonged to ancient mountains thrust up by prehistoric collisions between continents. Buried again over centuries by forest and soil buildup, the stones gradually worked their way back to the surface, only to become impediments to the farmers cultivating the land in the eighteenth century, who piled them into "linear landfills," a place to hold the stones.
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Encyclopedia of Stone Walls in Historical Context
- By David Elliott on 04-22-24
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A Country of Vast Designs
- James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
- By: Robert W. Merry
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 18 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of Texas---what would become California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado---belonged to Mexico.
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A Decent Overview of Polk's Presidency
- By James on 06-20-10
By: Robert W. Merry
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The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 24 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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This classic work explains the evolution of American political thought from the Declaration of Independence to the ratification of the Constitution. In so doing, it greatly illuminates the origins of the present American political system.
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This Audible book is NOT for a popular audience!
- By BigWally on 11-22-18
By: Gordon S. Wood
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The Sea and Civilization
- A Maritime History of the World
- By: Lincoln Paine
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 29 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human.
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Comprehensive
- By Than on 12-29-19
By: Lincoln Paine
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The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.
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I have good news and bad news
- By Ernie on 07-22-04
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Damn Right
- Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger (Revised)
- By: Janet Lowe
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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A must-listen biography from the author of the best-selling Warren Buffett Speaks.
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2019 audio of 1999 book
- By William J Brown on 03-10-20
By: Janet Lowe
Correcting the Myth of the Transcontinentals
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The depth and breadth of the research very effectively prove the points Mr. White is trying to convey to the reader. In some instances, the depth he goes into can bog down the overall flow of the book, but overall, I found it a very compelling story. In so many ways, there are so many parallels between Gilded Age financiers and politicians and our current day. Narration is solid overall.
Very In Depth and Enlightening
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Great Way to Tell the History
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Too much detail for an audiobook
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This erudite, 360-degree examination of the 1880-1929 Rail Boom tells us why 90% of the money invested was stolen, and why nobody won the race to build a transcontinental railway, because nobody built one.
A wonderful journey!
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A different view of a famous subject
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I always enjoy learning history, so I did enjoy “Railroaded”, however Mr. White also demonstrated a very strong hatred of the wealthy. The vast majority of the wealthy individuals in the book are described negatively as incompetent, corrupt and worse...repeatedly. Perhaps they were; as I said Mr. White demonstrated his expertise. However he also demonstrated a bias.
Expertise and Bias
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A history of fraud
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Ambitious topic that does not deliver a good story
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Great if you like Politics/Finance otherwise not
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