It is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad—the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks.The U.S. government pitted two companies—the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads—against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomotives, rails, and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower, muscle, and sweat, comes vibrantly to life.

    The Last Spike reconstructs the incredible story of how some 2,000 miles of steel crossed the continent in just five years — exactly half the time stipulated in the contract. Pierre Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking: the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it and ruin; the extraordinary land boom of Winnipeg in 1881–1882; and the epic tale of how William Van Horne rushed 3,000 soldiers over a half-finished railway to quell the Riel Rebellion.Dominating the whole saga are the men who made it all possible — a host of astonishing characters: Van Horne, the powerhouse behind the vision of a transcontinental railroad; Rogers, the eccentric surveyor; Onderdonk, the cool New Yorker; Stephen, the most emotional of businessmen; Father Lacombe, the black-robed voyageur; Sam Steele, of the North West Mounted Police; Gabriel Dumont, the Prince of the Prairies; more than 7,000 Chinese workers, toiling and dying in the canyons of the Fraser Valley; and many more — land sharks, construction geniuses, politicians, and entrepreneurs — all of whom played a role in the founding of the new Canada west of Ontario.

    Laura a married woman. They are are unrelated, but have something in common: they're dying. Each finds Steven, a strange man living in a ratty inner-city apartment. Steven can heal... but healing comes with a price. As there is no up without down, there can be no healing without payment.Part of the collection "What Tangled Webs" by Dan Dillard, in e-book and paperback.

    history in which two trains full of people, trapped high in the Cascade Mountains, are hit by a devastating avalancheIn February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. The world stopped--but nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved minute by minute: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned without escape, their railcars gradually being buried in the rising drifts. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad's most dedicated men--led by the line's legendarily courageous superintendent, James O'Neill--worked round-the-clock to rescue the trains. But the storm was unrelenting, and to the passenger's great anxiety, the railcars--their only shelter--were parked precariously on the edge of a steep ravine. As the days passed, food and coal supplies dwindled. Panic and rage set in as snow accumulated deeper and deeper on the cliffs overhanging the trains. Finally, just when escape seemed possible, the unthinkable occurred: the earth shifted and a colossal avalanche tumbled from the high pinnacles, sweeping the trains and their sleeping passengers over the steep slope and down the mountainside.Centered on the astonishing spectacle of our nation's deadliest avalanche, The White Cascade is the masterfully told story of a supremely dramatic and never-before-documented American tragedy. An adventure saga filled with colorful and engaging history, this is epic narrative storytelling at its finest.

    Four years after the initial invasion, Trevor Stone has grown his band of survivors into a small nation fighting alien occupiers and extraterrestrial monsters. While his best General leads an expedition to the Arctic Circle to recover a powerful artifact, Trevor finds there is little difference between a war of liberation and a war of conquest.Empire will take the reader to chaotic battles atop glaciers, to street-to-street fighting as canine hunters battle horrific creatures, to a village in North Carolina that forces Trevor to decide between victory and his soul.

    The heroes and villains were Irish and Chinese laborers, intrepid engineers, avaricious bankers, stock manipulators, and corrupt politicians. Before it was over more than 155 million acres (one tenth of the country) were given away to the railroad magnates, Indian tribes were decimated, the buffalo were driven from the Great Plains, millions of immigrants were lured from Europe, and a colossal continental nation was built.Woven into this dramatic narrative are the origins of present-day governmental corruption, the first ties between powerful corporations and politicians who "enjoyed the frequent showers of money that fell upon them from railroad stock manipulators, and gave away America." How the people of that time responded to a sense of disillusionment remarkably similar to our own adds a contemporary dimension to this story.

    Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the U.S. economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life. Their discriminatory rates sparked broad opposition and a new antimonopoly politics.With characteristic originality, range, and authority, Richard White shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.

    Here is China by rail, as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of one of the most intrepid and insightful travel writers of our time.

    Borneman comes a dazzling account of the battle to build America’s transcontinental rail lines. Rival Rails is an action-packed epic of how an empire was born—and the remarkable men who made it happen. After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, the rest of the country was up for grabs, and the race was on. The prize: a better, shorter, less snowy route through the corridors of the American Southwest, linking Los Angeles to Chicago. In Rival Rails, Borneman lays out in compelling detail the sectional rivalries, contested routes, political posturing, and ambitious business dealings that unfolded as an increasing number of lines pushed their way across the country. Borneman brings to life the legendary business geniuses and so-called robber barons who made millions and fought the elements—and one another—to move America, including William Jackson Palmer, whose leadership of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad relied on innovative narrow gauge trains that could climb steeper grades and take tighter curves; Collis P. Huntington of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific lines, a magnate insatiably obsessed with trains—and who was not above bribing congressmen to satisfy his passion; Edward Payson Ripley, visionary president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, whose fiscal conservatism and smarts brought the industry back from the brink; and Jay Gould, ultrasecretive, strong-armer and one-man powerhouse. In addition, Borneman captures the herculean efforts required to construct these roads—the laborers who did the back-breaking work, boring tunnels through mountains and throwing bridges across unruly rivers, the brakemen who ran atop moving cars, the tracklayers crushed and killed by runaway trains. From backroom deals in Washington, D.C., to armed robberies of trains in the wild deserts, from glorified cattle cars to streamliners and Super Chiefs, all the great incidents and innovations of a mighty American era are re-created with unprecedented power in Rival Rails.

    Their childhoods were spent in small Texas towns with summers at their respected grandparent’s farms. Like most teenagers growing up in small towns they could not wait to flee after graduation for big cities and successful careers. Careers were launched, the big house on the golf course bought, luxury cars leased, and fancy vacations taken. They had it all until a global fuel shortage started causing Mark to wonder about his job and the financial future of his family. Follow Mark and Kelly as they learn about global finances, hidden agendas, and the cover-up of the upcoming global fuel shortage and severe economic depression it will create. Follow the Turner’s as they plan their strategy to voluntarily move from an upper middle-class lifestyle to a self-sustaining lifestyle on an Oklahoma farm before it is too late. Learn alongside them as they learn the skills needed to live on a small farm, raise their own food, and prepare for a global economic depression on a scale never seem by mankind before.

    Nobody except Jake’s crew of urban explorers. They think they’re infiltrating another disused Tube station tonight, but he hasn’t told them the truth.Jake is haunted by a secret. An untold history that connects Black Death plague pits, the Necropolis Railway, the Moorgate disaster and some of London’s darkest legends. Tonight, Jake will discover what’s under the Underground. What’s under us all.Under is a horror/mystery novel set on the London Underground, from the author of the Auto Series.The short story Signal Failure, a prelude to Under, is free to download as an eBook from Amazon.

    The Vietnam War has become the touchstone for U.S. military misadventures—a war lost on the home front although never truly lost on the battlefront. During the pivotal decade of 1962 to 1972, U.S. involvement rose from a few hundred advisers to a fighting force of more than one million. This same period saw the greatest schism in American society since the Civil War, a generational divide pitting mothers and fathers against sons and daughters who protested the country’s ever-growing military involvement in Vietnam. Meanwhile, well-intentioned decisions in Washington became operational orders with tragic outcomes in the rice paddies, jungles, and villages of Southeast Asia. Through beautifully rendered artwork, The Vietnam War: A Graphic History depicts the course of the war from its initial expansion in the early 1960s through the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, and what transpired at home, from the antiwar movement and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to the Watergate break-in and the resignation of a president.

    Their leader made what was, and may still be, the longest range kill with a 7.62mm rifle. For the first time ever they explain what it's like to kill a man and what it takes to become one of the elite.The tragic tale of Headhunter Two is altogether different. This four man sniper team from a regiment known within the Corps as the Magnificent Bastards was killed in 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. Their deaths not only caused a reevaluation of sniper tactics and techniques, but created a desire for vengeance that was exacted nearly two years later in dramatic fashion.Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews, Halberstadt gets inside the sniper mind and shows how they think and interact with each other, how missions are planned and executed, how the weapons work, and even what happens when a bullet finally strikes its target. There are only a few hundred snipers from all the services put together in combat at any one time, making this true inside story a rare and important event.Both a uniquely intimate look at what makes a sniper tick and a harrowing read filled with dramatic war tales, "Trigger Men" is a book about killers and killing, without apology and without remorse.

    Organized around these rail journeys, "Waiting on a Train" is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism.Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible?Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads.While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America--and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.

    While the book is written as an introductory textbook for undergraduate students in public administration, it is hoped that it will also be useful for more advanced students of public administration, practicing public administrators, business managers, and ordinary citizens who wish to gain an overall view of public administration as the business of government.In preparing the second edition of this book, the author has been mindful of the development of public administration, particularly in the Philippines, since the publication of its first edition in 1983.