The history of America is, to a large extent, a history of railroads. Railroads connected the coasts, helped fashion the modern economy, and allowed for greater mobility of goods and people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This history of the railroads, though somewhat one-sided (no mention here of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of native people), covers a lot of ground. Fifteen short chapters take readers from the advent of the American railroads in the 1820s, through the golden age of the 1880s and 1890s, all the way up to the 1980s and onward. In addition, chapters highlight six early notable railroads in Ohio, New Jersey, New York, and South Carolina, among other locales.