This book is subtitled ' The Trancontinentals and the Making of Modern America' and that is the truth. It is a book not so much about the rails themselves, but about the men behind them, the men who borrowed the money, left the government holding the debt bag, and shaped the country in a way that was not all to the good. This book could really be subtitled 'Capitalism Goes Off the Rails', because it really shows what a mess these guys made of the rail system. A planned federal approach could have been better.
The take home message of the book gets transmitted early, and that is that greed has run the country--and in this case, it's infrastructure--for a very long time, and the placement of the railroads, the financing of them, and the environmental consequences is no exception to that rule. The men who were behind them were ruthless, immoral, mean-spirited, and as White portrays them, stupid and incompetent to boot. No wonder the rail system is no good! The only caveat I have is that the book does go into an extraordinary amount of detail about each and every one of them that goes on long after you get the message--but in a well-written way, and with good stories as well.
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