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

 Where the railroads and their entrepreneurs are ordinarily celebrated for drawing together the vast geographical reaches of the union, conflicts of interest—at local, state, and regional levels—characterized railroad growth at every stage. Despite the stated aims of government and the railroad corporations to promote settlement and commerce the states lost control and lost the economic benefits of the roads that ran through them. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including literature, diaries, and memoirs, Sarah Gordon has constructed an absorbing story of apparent triumph and real loss. Soft cover, 416 pages