Reading: The Great Bridge by David McCullough

“Among those who were about to stake so very much on him and his bridge, or who already had, there was not one who could honestly say he knew the man.” - David McCullough

Title: The Great Bridge

Author: David McCullough

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2001

Rating: 2 Stars (it was alright)

This book was first recommended to me 10 years ago by my AP US History teacher. I went ahead and bought it about 5 years ago and still didn't read it. Now that I've discovered the wonder that is Overdrive Audiobooks through the library, I have found it much easier to find time for David McCullough's books and therefore listened to this book over the past week.

After having listened to The Johnstown Flood most recently, my expectations were admittedly high going into this book. I think that's reflected in my rating of it, since I really don't think that it lived up. I expected the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge to be much more interesting.

Instead, the book focuses a lot on the technical aspects of building or working underwater. It spends great amounts of time discussing the personalities of the people involved with the bridge and their family history. It turns out they weren't really that interesting of people. The bridge didn't meet with that much opposition before it was approved. There wasn't that much to delay or mar the building. Even the discussion of corruption and Boss Tweed were technical and uninteresting

I do have to say that the discussion of Emily Roebling's contributions to the entire affair the most compelling part to me. She was inspirational and brilliant and in the end I did find the life of Washington Roebling (the engineer) to be quite interesting. Overall, I think that while the bridge is still an amazing sight and experience to walk down, the story of its construction is not as interesting as you might hope. (which with a construction project is the highest compliment)

2 Stars

#nerd #history #nonfiction