The Old Iron Road

An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West

David Haward Bain (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

470 Seiten

2022
University of Nebraska Press (Verlag)
9781496230485 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

In the summer of 2000 David Haward Bain and his family left their home in Vermont and headed west in search of America’s past. Spiritually, their journey began on a Kansas trail where the author’s grandmother was born in a covered wagon in 1889. Between the Missouri River and the Golden Gate, they retraced the entire route of the first transcontinental railroad and large stretches of the Oregon and California trails, and the equally colorful old Lincoln Highway. Following vanished iron rails and wagon wheel ruts, bumping down backroads and main streets, they discovered the deep, restless, uniquely American spirit of adventure that connects our past to our present.

A superb writer and an exacting researcher, Bain conjures up a marvelous sense of coming unstuck in time as he lingers in the ghost towns and battlegrounds, prairies and river ports, trainyards, museums, deserts, and diners that line his cruise west to California. Bain encounters a fascinating cast of characters, both historic and contemporary, as well as memories of his grandparents and the journeys that shaped his own heritage.

Writing in the tradition of William Least Heat-Moon and Ian Frazier, and with an engaging warmth and a deep grasp of history all his own, Bain has fashioned a quintessentially American journey.

David Haward Bain is the author of the award-winning Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad and Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in Smithsonian magazine, American Heritage, Kenyon Review, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and Newsday. Bain taught literature and creative writing at Middlebury College for thirty-two years.

List of Illustrations
Part I
1. The Odyssey Begins
2. Jumping Off

Part II
3. Rails and the River
4. The Lincoln Highway
5. The Road from Red Cloud
6. Hell on Wheels
7. The View from the Bluffs

Part III
8. Magic City
9. Road Tested on the Red Plains
10. Crossing the Divide
11. Green River to the Rim

Part IV
12. Through the Canyons to Paradise

Part V
13. Following the Humboldt
14. Silver State

Part VI
15. Over the Sierra
16. From Sacramento to the Sea
17. Golden Gate

Epilogue
References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	28.07.2022
Zusatzinfo	39 photographs, 1 map, index
Verlagsort	Lincoln
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Schienenfahrzeuge
Themenwelt	Reisen ► Reiseberichte ► Nord- / Mittelamerika
ISBN-13	9781496230485 / 9781496230485
Zustand	Neuware