The big roads : the untold story of the engineers, visionaries, and trailblazers who created the American superhighways / Earl Swift.
Material type:
TextPublication details: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.Description: 375 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cmISBN: - 0618812415 (hardback)
- 9780618812417 (hardback)
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 388.122 S977 | Available | 33111006754770 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl and the possibility of escape--the U.S. interstate system changed the face of our country. The Big Roads charts the creation of these essential American highways. From the turn-of-the-century car racing entrepreneur who spurred the citizen-led "Good Roads" movement, to the handful of driven engineers who conceived of the interstates and how they would work--years before President Eisenhower knew the plans existed--to the protests that erupted across the nation when highways reached the cities and found people unwilling to be uprooted in the name of progress, Swift followsa winding, fascinating route through twentieth-century American life.
How did we get from dirt tracks to expressways, from main streets to off-ramps, from mud to concrete and steel, in less than a century? Through decades of politics, activism, and marvels of engineering, we recognize in our highways the wanderlust, grand scale, and conflicting notions of citizenship and progress that define America.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Out of the mud -- Connecting the dots -- The crooked straight, the rough places plain -- The human obstacle.
A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl and the possibility of escape--the U.S. interstate system transformed America. The Big Roads presents the surprising history of how we got from dirt tracks to expressways in the span of a single lifetime. From the turn-of-the-century car-racing entrepreneur who spurred the "Good Roads" movement, to the handful of driven engineers who conceived of the interstates and how they would work--years before President Eisenhower knew the plans existed--to the protests that erupted when the projects encountered people unwilling to be uprooted in the name of progress, Swift follows a winding route through the dreams, discoveries and protest that shaped these mighty roads, and shows how the interstates embody the wanderlust, grand scale, and conflicting notions of citizenship and progress that define America.--From publisher description.