About the Author

Andrew R. Black has a PhD in history from Boston University. He is also the author of John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman, and Ardent Nationalist.

Reviews

History is about digging for connections, a job usually understood metaphorically, but in the case of Black's account of the Hoosac Tunnel, a perfectly literal statement. His dramatic story of 'The Great Bore, ' beautifully and painstakingly delivered, encompasses engineering genius, fatal miscalculation, and financial depletion in the railroad age. In a deeper sense, it's a nineteenth-century morality tale of an almost operatic character. This highly readable book gives life to a world of dangerous enterprise, capturing the extended birth pangs of American modernity.--Andrew Burstein, author of "The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving"

This beautifully written book is social history at its best. By focusing on the trials and tribulations of an overambitious project that went awry, Andrew Black is also telling a much wider story that will resonate with similar ones across America. It is an example of how technological progress does not always realize the ambitions of its promoters and how big projects are not always the best solution to problems, something with which Massachusetts people will be particularly familiar.--Christian Wolmar, author of "The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America"