Andrew R. Black has a PhD in history from Boston University. He is also the author of John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman, and Ardent Nationalist.
History is about digging for connections, a job usually understood
metaphorically, but in the case of Black's account of the Hoosac
Tunnel, a perfectly literal statement. His dramatic story of 'The
Great Bore, ' beautifully and painstakingly delivered, encompasses
engineering genius, fatal miscalculation, and financial depletion
in the railroad age. In a deeper sense, it's a nineteenth-century
morality tale of an almost operatic character. This highly readable
book gives life to a world of dangerous enterprise, capturing the
extended birth pangs of American modernity.--Andrew Burstein,
author of "The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington
Irving"
This beautifully written book is social history at its best. By
focusing on the trials and tribulations of an overambitious project
that went awry, Andrew Black is also telling a much wider story
that will resonate with similar ones across America. It is an
example of how technological progress does not always realize the
ambitions of its promoters and how big projects are not always the
best solution to problems, something with which Massachusetts
people will be particularly familiar.--Christian Wolmar, author of
"The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America"
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