Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869, was written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published bye Simon and Schuster; Rockefeller Center, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, Copyrighted in 2000. Summarizing this book is very difficult because you can summarize it in one sentence. As anyone would guess, the book was about the building of the transcontinental railroad. It started off about how they picked the route. Lincoln had asked Grenville Dodge what the best route for the railroad would be. A lot of routes were represented to Congress many times throughout the building of it, mainly for more money. The Transcontinental Railroad was split into two railroads. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. The book told of how the Union Pacific Railroad built from Omaha to the Rocky Mountains. The workers on the Union Pacific were in great danger when they got out into the Indian Territory. The Cheyenne, Sioux, and other tribes killed many men. . In 1866, the Union Pacific offered jobs on the railroad to anyone who was willing to work. There were so many workers that there were severe housing shortages and a big number of prostitutes and gamblers. As one worker put it, it was the "closest thing to the Foreign Legion you could find. (P.169)" Ambrose mentioned that the winter storms kept most crews from working and when they did work, there was a team of men shoveling snow to keep the railroad progressing. Bridges were built for the railroads over creeks and tunnels were made through the mountains by blasting them out with explosives. The Central Pacific was built from Sacramento to the Missouri River. The terrain was rough to build on, between blasting out tunnels and workers leaving for gold mines, the Central Pacific had its share of hardships. Many men applied to work for the CP, but most of them had gone to California to get riches, and being paid only $3 a day wasn't enough for them.
