Railroaded: The Transcontinentals And The Making Of Modern America (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Here's the version of the transcontinentals that should be taught in school! If you can wade through all the financial language, which can be pretty complicated and difficult to follow most of the time, you will come away with the true sense of fraud that defined America's western transcontinental railroads. The story of the Chinese chipping away at the Sierra Nevadas and the Irish fighting the Indians across the plains is better told elsewhere, but here is the version that we have not had told: the transcontinentals were massively overbuilt on speculation, then financially manipulated to bilk almost everyone out of their money--the government, shareholders, employees, communities along the tracks. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of corporations or railroads. This is a warmed over (and greatly inflated) version of the old 'robber baron' narrative that was a staple among 'progressive' academic historians during the first half of the 20th century. Unwilling to let the facts get in the way of his story, the author goes to great (and tortuous) lengths to draw parallels between the over-investment in the railroad sector of the economy in the post Civil War-era and the events surrounding the tech bubble of the 1990s and early 2000s. While there certainly are parallels to be drawn, it would take a subtler (or more objective) mind than Professor White's to find them. His disdain for entrepreneurs of all kinds is so over-powering that there is no room in his story for nuanced distinctions. Moreover, his clumsy treatment of Schumpeter is downright embarrassing.
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