Spanning the Gilded Age

Well written and exhaustively researched, John K. Browns book is about a builder, a bridge, money men, and the greed, ambition, confidence, and vision that made possible the engineering marvels of Americas Gilded Age.

— David Nasaw, author of Andrew Carnegie

In Spanning the Gilded Age, one of Americas most monumental pieces of engineering has finally found the historian it deserves. While writing a first-rate treatment of the physical and technical challenges Eadss bridge overcame, Brown also highlights the financial creativity required for such achievements in the age of high capitalism.

— Robert Friedel, University of Maryland

A century and a half after the completion of the Eads Bridge, we have the first comprehensive history of the remarkable James Buchanan Eads and his extraordinary civil-engineering achievement. Spanning the Gilded Age engagingly connects the stories of the engineers, financiers, politicians, and railroaders who united two halves of a continent.

— Albert Churella, Kennesaw State University

Brown serves up a rich slab of American history, from sweaty workers digging to bedrock below the Mississippi River to the rarified heights of transatlantic finance. Fabulous insights on city growth, bold engineering, railroad tangles, and classic robber barons like Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould.

— Thomas J. Misa, author of Leonardo to the Internet

Skullduggery, robber baron intrigue, and engineering genius on the shores of the Mississippi River after the Civil War: John Brown tells the gripping, many-sided genesis story of Eadss graceful, steel-arched bridge at St. Louis, set in an era when steel was still an experimental material and no one knew quite what to do with it.

— Robert Kanigel, author of The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency