Recommendations from our site
“David McCullough is a friend and mentor. His subjects range from the Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania to the biographies of presidents to the Wright Brothers. The Great Bridge was, for me, a pivotal book in understanding how you could tell a story about a great engineering accomplishment in the context of the backdrop of urban history and the development of New York. He is such a masterful storyteller that he can engage you in what seemed to be an unlikely subject for a full-length nonfiction narrative and succeed in spectacular fashion…It’s a very powerful story. Even though you know what the ending is—you know the bridge was built and that it’s still there—he creates a dramatic sense of just what it took to bring this bridge into being and to complete it. He also is very skillful at developing the characters, the human element, of the Roebling family: John Roebling, his son Washington Roebling, and, finally, Emily, Washington Roebling’s wife, who played a crucial role in the final years of the construction of the bridge because Washington Roebling was disabled by caisson disease. He ended up watching most of the construction of the bridge from his apartment window. His wife Emily was the key communicator between Roebling and the engineers working on the site.” Read more...
The best books on American History
Brent Glass, Historian
Our most recommended books
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Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
by Christopher Browning -
On War
by Carl von Clausewitz -
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler -
Histories
by Herodotus -
The Confessions
by Augustine (translated by Maria Boulding) -
The Interesting Narrative
by Olaudah Equiano