The Big Roads, Earl Swift
The Big Roads, Earl Swift
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The Big Roads
The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways

Author: Earl Swift

Narrator: Rob Shapiro

Unabridged: 12 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/12/2011


Synopsis

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 space of a single lifetime.

Earl Swift brings to light the visionaries who created these essential highways as well as the critics and citizens who questioned their headlong expansion throughout the country, including:
Carl Fisher, the irrepressible car-racing entrepreneur who spurred the push for good roads in the early years of the automobile, built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and made a fortune creating Miami Beach, only to lose it all;Thomas MacDonald, chief among a handful of driven engineers who conceived of the interstates and how they would work, years before President Eisenhower knew the plans existed;Lewis Mumford, the critic whose crusade against America's budding love affair with the automobile—and the ever bigger roads it required—now seems prescient;Joe Wiles, an African American family man turned activist, one of thousands of ordinary citizens in dozens of cities who found their homes and communities targeted by the concrete juggernaut—and were unwilling to be uprooted in the name of progress.In mapping a fascinating route through the dreams, discoveries, and protests that shaped these mighty roads, Swift shows that the interstates embody the wanderlust, grand scale, and conflicting notions of citizenship that define America.

About Earl Swift

Earl Swift is a five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and the author of Journey on the James, the 2003 PEN finalist Where They Lay: Searching for America's Lost Soldiers, and the short story collection The Tangierman's Lament. He has written for newspapers in St. Louis, Anchorage, and Norfolk, Virginia, where his work won numerous state and national awards, and his writing has appeared in Parade magazine, Best Newspaper Writing, and River Teeth. Earl lives in Norfolk with his daughter, Saylor.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Alec on December 12, 2012

I know what you're thinking. "Did a man named Earl Swift really write a book about the predominant mode of American rapid transit?" Believe me, I was skeptical as well, but after researching both the front AND the back covers of the book, my skepticism was dispelled. In celebration, I bought the boo......more

Goodreads review by April on May 03, 2012

I geeked out on this book. It clears all misconceptions about what I've heard people say about the freeway in their city (oh this was the first freeway ever, created by Hoover for war transportation..). Not surprisingly - I've heard this from more than one person in more than one city. From when I wa......more

Who knew there was so much about our national highway system? I didn’t. Earl Swift tells a complex story that involves the growth of our country and how its expansion was determined by the trails that we chose to improve travel from city to city and from coast to coast. Obviously, we had roads before......more

Goodreads review by Socraticgadfly on May 04, 2012

Eisenhower invented the interstate highway system and idea after being influenced by German autobahns at the end of World War II, right? Wrong. Wrong, Wrong. In fact, pre-WWII, bureaucrats in FDR’s government crafted the basic ideas, both in terms of routes, and safety/engineering, that became today’s......more

Goodreads review by Marks54 on September 16, 2012

This is a detailed history of how the US highway system developed in the 20th century, with a focus on the Interstate Highways. It draws together a large numbers of facts and factoids that are well known by nearly everyone who has done cross country driving but which I have never seen put together i......more