Rating: 
Summary: Inferior to Bain's recent book on the same subject
Review: I've read, enjoyed, and valued other histories by Ambrose, but this is not one of his best efforts. If you are seriously interested in the building of the first transcontinental railroad, get and read David Haward Bain's monumental Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (Viking, 1999, 797 pages), the result of fourteen years of research and the definitive modern treatment of this subject. Ambrose's book has the misfortune to follow on the heels of Bain's, and it cannot seriously compete with it. Bain's book is truly comprehensive and thorough, a labor of love; in comparison Ambrose's seems somewhat perfunctory and superficial, just another installment in the assembly line of books Ambrose has been cranking out in recent years. If you will compare the two books you will see what I mean.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing
Review: This is an amazing book created by an amazing author. I recall Ambrose's reflections about the railroad in Ken Burns' magnificent film effort, "The West." A fascinating read. Buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. While it is most likely historically accurate I found this subject extremely dry. Parts were very intersting but I was expecting more about how the Irish and Chinese actually built the railroad. If you're into trains this book is for you; However, it took me longer to read this book than it took to build the railroad. Sorry Mr. Ambrose I'm a total fan but this just didn't work for me.
Rating:
Summary: Hokey! I rushed to return the book. I thought I would gag.
Review: And then Abraham Lincoln stretched out his long leg. . . And then President Lincoln stretched out his long arm. . . The Irish were this way. . . The Chinese were that way. . . Dreadfully boring. . . . Absolutely popular history. . . The first of Ambrose's books I've attempted and probably the last. . . Hokey, hokey, hokey!!
Rating:
Summary: Top Form!
Review: This book was wonderful! Stephen Ambrose brings to light an event that has often been taken for granted and was the greatest American engineering feat of the 19th. century---the building of the transcontinental railroad. From the first plans of the surveyers to the driving of the golden spike, Ambrose brings to life the strengths and greed of the developers, pettiness of politicians, and incredible courage of the men who built the railroad. The amazing endurance of the Chinese who worked with stoic courage under intolerable discrimination and the good-natured attitudes of the Irish laborers. This book is well organized and moves quickly--especially once we get into the "Great Race." Ambrose also shows tolerance and sensitivity in portraying the directors of the UP and the CP, without whom the railroad would have failed.
Rating: 
Summary: A powerful story told well
Review: Stephen Ambrose has made a tremendous career for himself by writing oral histories about heroic American men. This book is no exception: Ambrose does a terrific job of digging up truly inspirational stories of common laborers who underwent grueling hardship in order to build the railroads.The result is a very compelling read. However, given how much effort went into this book and given the obvious depth of Ambrose's research, it would have been nice to see a bit more perspective, a bit more actual history surrounding the railroad. If you are still curious about the subject after reading Ambrose's book, I highly recommend _Empire Express_ by David Howard Bain.
Rating:
Summary: Ambrose Does It Again
Review: Stephen Ambrose has done it again - made history exciting. I'm not a railroad buff, but after reading Nothing Like It In The World, I want to ride the rails and follow the iron ribbon from Omaha to Sacramento and see first hand the results of the heroic efforts of the thousands of men who were driven to unbelievable accomplishments. A railroad buff may find this story old news, but for the rest of us, it's a fascinating "how to" insight into one of our country's greatest achievements.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good on the Most Part
Review: I really like Ambrose's style and especially enjoyed Undaunted Courage. I was looking forward to this work and his quality prose and research but was initially taken by surprise with a couple of things. For example, on the paste-down endpaper map, Oregon is "bracketed" as a territory in 1869. Not so, Oregon became a state in 1859. I also have no idea why he fails to even mention that the first transcontinental railroad was built across Panama 1854-55. It was built by the United States, and no easy feat at that even though it was short-50 miles or so through hills, swamp and jungle. I'm a bit leary now of the overall quality of research that appears to be compromised or incorrect-What else might be lacking? In the preface Ambrose makes it clear that many people pulled together research for him so maybe that's where the difficulty arose. To be fair the aforementioned are relatively minor details but I expect superior quality from a superior historian. His strongpoint, however, is bringing the "average guy" into the sphere of historical importance and few other authors can do this with such empathy; this book clearly shines in the "how" the transcontinental railroad across the U. S. was achieved.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing Like it in the World
Review: Stephen Ambrose is such a remarkable historian. His wonderful ability to look at reams and reams of information and distill it down into a vastly entertaining look at our history. He has such admiration for his subjects (D-Day, Citizen Soldier, Undaunted Courage) and for America that it comes through in every line and written word. He makes you realize how really remarkable the United States of America is, and how remarkable our accomplishments in the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries.
Rating:
Summary: The Wonders of Working on the Railroad
Review: Is there a more skillful writer of American narrative history practicing today than Stephen Ambrose. Not in my opinion. In this exceptionally fine book, Ambrose tells the story of the greatest engineering feat of the 19th century: the construction of the transcontinental railroad, which connected Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California. The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (only a couple of female characters figure prominently in Ambrose's story, although many others played important roles behind the scenes), included some of the most famous names in the history of 19th-century politics, business, finance, and industry, as well as tens of thousands of virtually-anonymous workers who provided millions of man-hours of sweat equity in this extraordinary project. This book is especially compelling because, more than anything else, it is a great human drama and some of its passages are as poignant as How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn's great tale of Welsh coal miners. However, Ambrose is painting on a much larger canvas. We all know how the story will end - the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met at Promontory Summit north of the Great Salt Lake in Utah on May 10, 1869 - but Ambrose's narrative is given an urgency by his effective use of newspaper and magazine accounts of the events which transpired in the 1860s. Ambrose acknowledges that all of his research assistants were members of his family, and they are to be commended. The technical details about the vast quantities of materials purchased and the travails involved in transporting them to where they were needed are fascinating. In addition, this book's many outstanding features includes its collection of photographs. Anyone familiar with Civil War-era photography will recognize the facial types, but I was amazed by photographs depicting engineering and construction marvels: bridges, tunnels, snow sheds, trestles cuts, and a myriad of others. The ability of the surveyors, engineers, construction foremen, and workers to overcome every type of natural obstacle during the course of construction was simply remarkable, and Ambrose's description of building the Central Pacific through the Sierra Nevada mountains is thrilling. Ambrose clearly was impressed by the enormity of the railroad builders' accomplishments, but he occasionally offers some wry humor. The Hell-on-Wheels towns which sprung up around the railroads' tracks were rough places then but sources of some amusement now. And Ambrose makes much of the delightful irony that Leland Stanford was elected governor of California in 1861 in part because he aggressively slandered Chinese immigrants as the "dregs of Asia" and "that degraded race," but, if it had not been for the efforts of thousands of Chinese laborers, the Central Pacific portion of the railroad might never have been finished. (Equivalent numbers of Irish workers performed most of the construction on the Union Pacific line from the east). According to Ambrose, many of the Chinese were less than five feet tall and weighed no more than 120 lbs., but they proved to be ideal workers: industrious, intelligent, and generally uncomplaining. When a construction foreman declares "I will not boss Chinese!", one of the Central Pacific's directors replies: "They built the Great Wall of China, didn't they?" The men who conceived, financed, designed, and built the railroad are Ambrose's real story, but this book is made additionally enjoyable by appearances, sometimes extended, sometimes cameo, by a number of the most famous men of the age, including Presidents, Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant, Brigham Young, General William T. Sherman, and Horace Greeley. There are a few instances where this book could have used more careful editing. For instance, Charles Francis Adams is first identified, incorrectly, as the "grandson of two presidents" and only later, correctly, as "grandson and great-grandson of U.S. presidents." And we probably only needed to read once that the wife of the Central Pacific construction boss accompanied her husband throughout the project, living in a passenger car from which she hung a caged canary around her entrance. But I consider these to be very minor defects. With the possible exception of the 1780s and the 1940s, no decade in American history was more exciting than the 1860s. It included a successful resolution of the greatest crisis in American history, the Civil War, and the extension of the transportation infrastructure from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Railroad construction was the largest industry of its time, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad (and the telegraph line built alongside it) was an indispensable precursor to American greatness. By 1900, in large part as a result of its extensive system of internal transportation, the United States was the strongest economic power in the world. Less than a week after it was released, Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World is already well on its way to becoming a national bestseller, and its success could not be more richly well deserved. I do not remember the last time I enjoyed a book so much.
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