Tracks Across Continents, Paths Through History

Tracks Across Continents, Paths Through History
Author: Douglas J. Puffert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2009-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226685098

A standard track gauge—the distance between the two rails—enables connecting railway lines to exchange traffic. But despite the benefits of standardization, early North American railways used six different gauges extensively, and even today breaks of gauge at national borders and within such countries as India and Australia are expensive burdens on commerce. In Tracks across Continents, Paths through History, Douglas J. Puffert offers a global history of railway track gauge, examining early choices and the dynamic process of diversity and standardization that resulted. Drawing on the economic theory of path dependence, and grounded in economic, technical, and institutional realities, this innovative volume traces how early historical events, and even idiosyncratic personalities, have affected choices of gauge ever since, despite changing technology and understandings of what gauge is optimal. Puffert also uses this history to develop new insights in the theory of path dependence. Tracks across Continents, Paths through History will be essential reading for anyone interested in how history and economics inform each other.

Twin Tracks

Twin Tracks
Author: James Burke
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1439128758

Twin Tracks is a landmark book of real-world stories that investigates the nature of change and divines as never before the unlikely origins of many aspects of contemporary life. In each of the work's twenty-five narratives, we discover how the different outcomes of an important historical event in the past often come together again in the future. Each chapter starts with an event -- such as the U.S. attack on Tripoli in 1804 -- that generates two divergent series of consequences. After tracking each pathway as it ranges far and wide through time and space, Burke shows how the paths finally and unexpectedly converge in the modern world. Twin Tracks pinpoints the myriad ways the future is shaped, whether by love, war, accident, genius, or discovery. For instance, in "The Marriage of Figaro to Stealth Fighter," Burke's twin tracks start with the composer of the opera and the French spy from whose play he stole the plot. The tracks then encompass, among other things, freemasonry, the War of Independence, Captain Cook, jellyfish, Jane Austen, and audio tape. Ultimately, the convergence of the two Figaro tracks sets the stage for the development of Gulf War Stealth aircraft. Wonderfully accessible and lucidly written, Twin Tracks offers an amusing and instructive new view of the past and the future.

Train Tracks

Train Tracks
Author: Michael Savage
Publisher: William Morrow
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-11-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780062210845

“A marvelous storyteller.” —The New Yorker “A blazing flamethrower of truth.” —Ted Nugent, Washington Times A #1 New York Times bestselling author and superstar radio personality, Michael Savage is admired by millions for his tough talk and no-punches-pulled common sense about the state of our union and its leaders. In Train Tracks, a more personal side of Savage shines through in this marvelous collection of “American Stories for the Holidays.” Like Glen Beck’s blockbuster, The Christmas Sweater, Michael Savage’s poignant, personal stories of home, family, and the holidays will resonate with readers everywhere.

Abandoned Tracks

Abandoned Tracks
Author: W. Thomas Mainwaring
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0268103607

In Abandoned Tracks, W. Thomas Mainwaring bridges the gap between scholarly and popular perceptions of the Underground Railroad. Historians have long recognized that many aspects of the Underground Railroad have been mythologized by emotion, memory, time, and wishful thinking. Mainwaring’s book is a rich, in-depth attempt to separate fact from fiction in one local area, while also contributing to a scholarly discussion of the Underground Railroad by placing Washington County, Pennsylvania, in the national context. Just as the North was not consistent in its perspective on the Civil War and the slavery issue, the Underground Railroad had distinct regional variations. Washington County had a well-organized abolition movement, even though its members helped a comparatively small number of fugitive slaves escape, largely because of the small nearby slave population in what was then western Virginia. Its origins as a slave county make it an interesting case study of the transition from slavery to freedom and of the origins of black and white abolitionism. Abandoned Tracks lends much to the ongoing scholarly debate about the extent, scope, and nature of the Underground Railroad. This book is written both for scholars of abolitionism and the Underground Railroad and for an audience interested in local history.

Parallel Tracks

Parallel Tracks
Author: Lynne Kirby
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 1997
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780822318392

In wide-ranging and provocative analyses of dozens of silent films - icons of film history like The General and The Great Train Robbery as well as many that are rarely discussed - Kirby examines how trains and rail travel embodied concepts of spectatorship and mobility grounded in imperialism and the social, sexual, and racial divisions of modern Western culture.

Empire's Tracks

Empire's Tracks
Author: Manu Karuka
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2019-01-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520296648

Empire’s Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.

Making Tracks

Making Tracks
Author: Terry Pindell
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 1990
Genre: Railroad travel
ISBN: 9780802112798

The author relates his journey across America aboard passenger trains, recalls the tales of noted figures in the history of American railroading, and highlights adventures and passengers he met along the way

Life through Time and Space

Life through Time and Space
Author: Wallace Arthur
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2017-08-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0674982274

All humans share three origins: the beginning of our individual lives, the appearance of life on Earth, and the formation of our planetary home. Life through Time and Space brings together the latest discoveries in both biology and astronomy to examine our deepest questions about where we came from, where we are going, and whether we are alone in the cosmos. A distinctive voice in the growing field of astrobiology, Wallace Arthur combines embryological, evolutionary, and cosmological perspectives to tell the story of life on Earth and its potential to exist elsewhere in the universe. He guides us on a journey through the myriad events that started with the big bang and led to the universe we inhabit today. Along the way, readers learn about the evolution of life from a primordial soup of organic molecules to complex plants and animals, about Earth’s geological transformation from barren rock to diverse ecosystems, and about human development from embryo to infant to adult. Arthur looks closely at the history of mass extinctions and the prospects for humanity’s future on our precious planet. Do intelligent aliens exist on a distant planet in the Milky Way, sharing the three origins that characterize all life on Earth? In addressing this question, Life through Time and Space tackles the many riddles of our place and fate in the universe that have intrigued human beings since they first gazed in wonder at the nighttime sky.

Gilsonite Country

Gilsonite Country
Author: Uintah County Regional History Center
Publisher: America Through Time
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781634991124

Gilsonite is a solid hydrocarbon mined in vertical veins in southern Uintah County, Utah. It is found in veins anywhere from a foot to twenty-two feet in width, and a depth of a few feet up to 2,000 feet. The black shiny mineral is not commercially mined anywhere else in the world and only found in a few other places. Following discovery, miners began working the gilsonite mines in the late 1800s. With the remoteness and distance to the mines, mining camps were set up at the various mine sites. The Uintah Railway was built from Mack, Colorado, over Baxter Pass, to transport gilsonite and eventually passengers and freight to and from the mining communities. Families joined their husbands and fathers at the camps. Communities sprang up, namely the communities of Dragon, Rainbow, Watson, and Bonanza, along with others. Stores and boarding houses were opened to accommodate the miners and their families and schools were built for the children to attend. The rich history left behind from the gilsonite mining communities gives an understanding of those that worked and lived there and certainly deserves its place in history.

Crossing the Tracks

Crossing the Tracks
Author: Barbara Stuber
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-07-06
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1416997059

At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts—no home, no family, no plan. Her mother died when she was six, and her selfish father hires her out as a companion to a country doctor’s elderly mother. Iris, stuck in the middle of 1920s rural Missouri, discovers that "hobo" is short for "homeward bound," and cultivates an eccentric cast of folks into family, creating the home she never had. But when she learns that a neighboring tenant farmer may have had more than his hands on his pregnant daughter, Iris must intervene to save the girl and her unborn baby. The many facets of what makes a family are illuminated with warmth and charm in this beautifully crafted tale.