Name: The Big Roads

Full name: The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways

Author: Earl Swift
Year: 2011
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Genres/categories:
History, Non Fiction, Travel

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ISBNs:
9780618812417
0618812415
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.
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