Eugene Alvarez

Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828-1860 is a scholarly work under the imprimatur of the University of Alabama Press which does an excellent job of blending careful historical research with an engaging style of writing. The chapter headings: The Introduction of the Railroad, The Railroad Mania Continues to Grow, Engines of Smoke, Fire, and Cinders, the Railroad Passenger Car, The Hazardous Roadway, The Perils of the Road, The Railroad Station, Society in the Cars, and Traveling Through the South amount to a topic sentence outline for the book. The flow of each chapter and each section within each chapter is from the general to the specific and the presentation of details, be they overarching or minutia, is done in a manner which gives the book the feel of a well-paced novel.

For example in the chapter Engines of Smoke, Fire and Cinders, Alvarez opens with a general discussion of the state of southern transportation of both people and things. After providing the overview his narrative shifts the discussion to specific aspects of the issues of rail transport and it is at this level that he allows specific quotes from letters and memoirs of contemporary passengers of the day to provide insight as to what all of this new technology meant to the individual...on page 36 we have:

“ But the impact of rail travel and its changing influences through speed was best recorded in 1836 by the Virginia lawyer James Davidson:
If my great grand father had have been told that his great grand son, at this day, would dine at one in the evening and go to bed the same evening 120 miles distant, he would have called the Prophet a fool.”

It is because of this style of writing that I have tagged the book both as “railroad history” and as “first person accounts”. I think will appeal to anyone with an interest in either first person accounts of the railroad experience or just U.S. history in general. (Text Length - 167 pages, Total Length - 221 pages. Includes appendix, chapter notes, index, bibliography)… (mehr)