The story of the American railway system is more than tracks and trains. It changed the country’s economy, identity, and its very landscape as it snaked its way across the states and redefined how and where we lived. In this new volume, Travelers, Tracks, and Tycoons: The Railroad in American Legend and Life, out now from University of Chicago Press, Nicholas Fry draws on a local trove of transportation history to tell the story of two centuries on the rails.
Fry is the Robert W. McKnight Endowed Curator for the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, where the Barriger Collections form the heart of one North America’s best resources for the study of railway history. For Travelers, Tracks, and Tycoons, Fry has refined the long and multifaceted story of trains in America into a fascinating compendium that delivers a crash course on railroad history alongside examples of artifacts and ephemera. Maps, news clippings, drawings, and advertisements lend color and interest to the many facts and figures presented across the book’s 168 pages.
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Beyond the book itself, the most dedicated historians and hobbyists can view a three-part lecture series hosted by Fry in partnership with The Grolier Club online. Find the three lectures—“Travelers: Journeys on the Railroads from the Early Surveys to Modern Vacations,” “Tracks: Images Documenting the Building of the Railroads,” and “Tycoons: Men, Money and Monuments”—by clicking here.
