Socrata University exam

I'm working to pass the Socrata University exam. An extra credit portion of the exam is to embed a visualization in a blog post. Here it is:

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Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of America

In the interest of engaging more with my reading, I'm going to start posts about books and articles I've read.

The first is Richard White's Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of America. I had the privilege of seeing Dr. White speak at the WAML meeting in October 2011. I had been very interested in the Spatial History Project at Stanford and was excited to hear him speak about spatial history and using mapping technology to inform his work. Dr. White did not disappoint and gave an engaging talk about his use of maps, GIS, and spatial data in his work.

Railroaded is an immaculately researched book that details the financial, political, and business dealings of the companies and men who built the transcontinental railroads in the United States. It is very clear that White is unable to suffer the fools and foolish acts of the Big 4 and others involved in building these railroads. In fact, White's antipathy toward his subject make Railroaded an especially entertaining read.

The book discusses the financing of transcontinental railroads in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the Crédit Mobilier Scandal of 1872, and the nonsensical ways freight rates were manipulated to benefit railroads in spite of all logic. All of these missteps in the creation of railroads, that themselves had dubious utility at the time, lead one to consider just how central trust is with regard to the economy. Not only does White discuss, at length, trust among the heads of the railroad companies, but also trust with regard to lending money. Further, the trust extended by railroad employees that their bosses were capable of running a railroad, and safely, was continually tested and repeatedly failed. White's research and descriptions of the malfeasance displayed by those at the top levels of the transcontinental railroad companies are, unfortunately, all too familiar in a world where Enron and Goldman Sachs continue to lower expectations of those who are in charge of all the money.

A counterbalance to the corporate ineptitude displayed by Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington, Jay Gould, Leland Stanford and others is the work and writing of Charles Francis Adams, Jr. who was president of the Union Pacific Railroad for six years in the late 19th century. White relies heavily on Adams for both logical and financial grounding, but also due to the fact that Adams wrote extensively about his mission to fix the Union Pacific Railroad. Adams displays his family's curmudgeonliness in full force with dour predictions for the Union Pacific which, as White repeatedly illustrates, is not undue.

White intersperses his spatial and business history with biographical and contextual interstitial mini chapters that lend a personal and broadening touch to Railroaded. This technique serves to bring the reader closer to the actors in the book and to provide useful context to the specific details of the focus of the work. Not until the conclusion does White engage directly with the men for whom he has an affection but is also consistently frustrated. After taking a journey with White through the history of railroading on the grandest scale possible, it is refreshing to hear his unfiltered opinions on the men who created a massive financial and political infrastructure project in spite of themselves.