The big roads
Subtitle: the untold story of the engineers, visionaries, and trailblazers who created the American superhighways
By: Earl Swift
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Boston, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 375
ISBN-13: 9780618812417
Subjects: History; Biography; Highway engineers; HISTORY / United States / 20th Century; Highway engineering; Interstate Highway System; HISTORY / United States / State & Local / General
Description: "A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl and the possibility of escape the U.S. interstate system changed the face of our country. The Big Roads charts the creation of these essential American highways. From the turn-of-the-century car racing entrepreneur who spurred the citizen-led "Good Roads" movement, to the handful of driven engineers who conceived of the interstates and how they would work years before President Eisenhower knew the plans existed to the protests that erupted across the nation when highways reached the cities and found people unwilling to be uprooted in the name of progress, Swift follows a winding, fascinating route through twentieth-century American life. How did we get from dirt tracks to expressways, from main streets to off-ramps, from mud to concrete and steel, in less than a century? Through decades of politics, activism, and marvels of engineering, we recognize in our highways the wanderlust, grand scale, and conflicting notions of citizenship and progress that define America"--

"A history of the planning, construction, and impact of the U.S. interstate highway system"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.