The Northeast Corridor
The Trains, the People, the History, the Region
Seiten
2024
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-82283-9 (ISBN)
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-82283-9 (ISBN)
All aboard for the first comprehensive history of the hard-working and wildly influential Northeast Corridor.
Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far beyond the right-of-way. David Alff welcomes readers aboard to see how nineteenth-century train tracks did more than connect Boston to Washington, DC. They transformed hundreds of miles of Atlantic shoreline into a political capital, a global financial hub, and home to fifty million people. The Northeast Corridor reveals how freight trains, commuter rail, and Amtrak influenced—and in turn were shaped by—centuries of American industrial expansion, metropolitan growth, downtown decline, and revitalization.
Paying as much attention to Aberdeen, Trenton, New Rochelle, and Providence as to New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, Alff provides narrative thrills for history buffs, train enthusiasts, and adventurers alike. What’s more, he offers a glimpse into the future of the corridor. New infrastructural plans—supported by President Joe Biden, famously Amtrak’s biggest fan—envision ever-faster trains zipping along technologically advanced rails. Yet those tracks will literally sit atop a history that links the life of Frederick Douglass, who fled to freedom by boarding a train in Baltimore, to the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which is expected to be the newest link in the corridor by 2032.
Trains have long made the places that make America, and they still do.
Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far beyond the right-of-way. David Alff welcomes readers aboard to see how nineteenth-century train tracks did more than connect Boston to Washington, DC. They transformed hundreds of miles of Atlantic shoreline into a political capital, a global financial hub, and home to fifty million people. The Northeast Corridor reveals how freight trains, commuter rail, and Amtrak influenced—and in turn were shaped by—centuries of American industrial expansion, metropolitan growth, downtown decline, and revitalization.
Paying as much attention to Aberdeen, Trenton, New Rochelle, and Providence as to New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, Alff provides narrative thrills for history buffs, train enthusiasts, and adventurers alike. What’s more, he offers a glimpse into the future of the corridor. New infrastructural plans—supported by President Joe Biden, famously Amtrak’s biggest fan—envision ever-faster trains zipping along technologically advanced rails. Yet those tracks will literally sit atop a history that links the life of Frederick Douglass, who fled to freedom by boarding a train in Baltimore, to the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which is expected to be the newest link in the corridor by 2032.
Trains have long made the places that make America, and they still do.
David Alff is associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of The Wreckage of Intentions: Projects in British Culture,1660-1730.
Introduction: Greatest Asset
I. Traces
1: A Somewhere-Else Feeling
2: Promising Passage
3: The Great Chain
II. Power
4: A Tale of Two Empires
5: Terminal Zones
6: Wiring the Coast
III. Rust
7: Runaway
8: Flagging through Sprawl
9: The Great Society Derails
IV. Return
10: Improvising Amtrak
11: Battle Lines
12: After Rubble
Coda: Reborn Again
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 01.04.2024 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 20 halftones |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 513 g |
| Themenwelt | Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Schienenfahrzeuge |
| Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-226-82283-4 / 0226822834 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-226-82283-9 / 9780226822839 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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