The Filth of Progress
The Filth of Progress

Author: Ryan Dearinger

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-10-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0520284593

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"In America's historical imagination, toil and triumph against nature and overwhelming odds characterizes such achievements as the Erie Canal and the transcontinental railroad. Triumph transformed canal and railroad entrepreneurs into visionaries whose work brought the nation bountiful riches and did the Lord's bidding. Celebrated for their spirit and perseverance in 'building' the nation's infrastructure, they found respect for looking to tomorrow and creating a future. For generations, most indexes of American history supported and reinforced this narrative of progress. Yet, if this is the historical memory, it is conveniently stunted. What of those whose bodies strained and broke under the load of such glories? What of those men beyond the din and fanfare who only appear in old photographs with faces blurred and indistinguishable? In their lives and deaths in the mud, muck, and mountains is another history of American achievement. These barely visible and forgotten, ordinary men, 'unskilled' immigrants from Ireland and China, Mormons, and native-born American workingmen rank, as well, as the creators of national growth and progress. Their experiences and voices, along with those of the privileged and well-connected, are the subjects of this study. I examine the rise of Western canals and railroads to national prominence through the menial labor of countless men, largely hidden from view because they left virtually no paper trail, who strung together livelihoods at the economic fringes of society. This book examines the contest for control of American progress and history as distilled from the competing narratives of canal and railroad construction workers and those fortunate enough to avoid this fate"--Provided by publisher.

The Filth of Progress
The Filth of Progress

Author: Ryan Dearinger

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-10-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0520960378

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The Filth of Progress explores the untold side of a well-known American story. For more than a century, accounts of progress in the West foregrounded the technological feats performed while canals and railroads were built and lionized the capitalists who financed the projects. This book salvages stories often omitted from the triumphant narrative of progress by focusing on the suffering and survival of the workers who were treated as outsiders. Ryan Dearinger examines the moving frontiers of canal and railroad construction workers in the tumultuous years of American expansion, from the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 to the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869. He tells the story of the immigrants and Americans—the Irish, Chinese, Mormons, and native-born citizens—whose labor created the West’s infrastructure and turned the nation’s dreams of a continental empire into a reality. Dearinger reveals that canals and railroads were not static monuments to progress but moving spaces of conflict and contestation.

The Filth of Progress
The Filth of Progress

Author: Ryan Dearinger

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2015-10-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0520284607

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The Filth of Progress explores the untold side of a well-known American story. For more than a century, accounts of progress in the West foregrounded the technological feats performed while canals and railroads were built and lionized the capitalists who financed the projects. This book salvages stories often omitted from the triumphant narrative of progress by focusing on the suffering and survival of the workers who were treated as outsiders. Ryan Dearinger examines the moving frontiers of canal and railroad construction workers in the tumultuous years of American expansion, from the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 to the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869. He tells the story of the immigrants and Americans—the Irish, Chinese, Mormons, and native-born citizens—whose labor created the West’s infrastructure and turned the nation’s dreams of a continental empire into a reality. Dearinger reveals that canals and railroads were not static monuments to progress but moving spaces of conflict and contestation.

American History Unbound
American History Unbound

Author: Gary Y Okihiro

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 0520274350

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"American History: Asians and Pacific Islanders is a survey history of the United States from its beginnings to the present as revealed by Asian American and Pacific Islander history. As such, this textbook is a work of history and anti-history, a narrative and an account at odds with most standard versions of the nation's past. When seen from its margins, the US is an island and an outcome of oceanic worlds, a periphery and a center, a nation and a nation among nations. Asian and Pacific Islander history transforms fundamentally our understanding of American history."--Provided by publisher.

Buried Dreams
Buried Dreams

Author: Andrew R. Black

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0807174092

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The Hoosac railroad tunnel in the mountains of northwestern Massachusetts was a nineteenth-century engineering and construction marvel, on par with the Brooklyn Bridge, Transcontinental Railroad, and Erie Canal. The longest tunnel in the Western Hemisphere at the time (4.75 miles), it took nearly twenty-five years (1851‒1875), almost two hundred casualties, and tens of millions of dollars to build. Yet it failed to deliver on its grandiose promise of economic renewal for the commonwealth, and thus is little known today. Andrew R. Black’s Buried Dreams refreshes public memory of the project, explaining how a plan of such magnitude and cost came to be in the first place, what forces sustained its completion, and the factors that inhibited its success. Black digs into the special case of Massachusetts, a state disadvantaged by nature and forced repeatedly to reinvent itself to succeed economically. The Hoosac Tunnel was just one of the state’s efforts in this cycle of decline and rejuvenation, though certainly the strangest. Black also explores the intense rivalry among Eastern Seaboard states for the spoils of western expansion in the post‒Erie Canal period. His study interweaves the lure of the West, the competition between Massachusetts and archrival New York, the railroad boom and collapse, and the shifting ground of state and national politics. The psychic makeup of Americans before and after the Civil War heavily influenced public perceptions of the tunnel; by the time it was finished, Black contends, the indomitable triumphalism that had given birth to the Hoosac had faded to skepticism and cynicism. Anticipated economic benefits never arrived, and Massachusetts eventually sold the tunnel for only a fraction of its cost to a private railroad company. Buried Dreams tells a story of America’s reckoning with the perils of impractical idealism, the limits of technology to bend nature to its will, and grand endeavors untempered by humility.

The Bodhisattva Way
The Bodhisattva Way

Author: Rulu

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2013-03-08

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1481722344

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The teachings of the Buddha are classified into five categories, the Five Vehicles, according to sentient beings’ aspirations and capacities, However, He intends for all to ride the One Vehicle to Buddhahood. Although Buddha nature is in all, everyone needs training to reveal it. He who activates the bodhi mind to enlighten himself and others is a Bodhisattva, who must accumulate merit and develop wisdom on the Bodhisattva Way to Buddhahood. This book, Rulu’s fourth, presents three sutras in English, all translated from texts in the Chinese Buddhist Canon. Sutra 1 is the Sutra of the Garland of a Bodhisattva’s Primary Karmas. It presents the forty-two levels of training on the Bodhisattva Way, classified into six stages. This sutra has never before been translated into English. Sutra 2 is chapter 7 of the Sutra of the Profound Secret Unraveled. It describes the four purities and the eleven parts of training, which rule the holy grounds, and explains the ten paramitas. Sutra 3 is chapter 26 of the Mahavaipulya Sutra of Buddha Adornment. It presents in detail a Bodhisattva’s training on the Ten Grounds, his spiritual attainments, and his worldly requitals. The translator’s introduction integrates the essential teachings in these three sutras. This book will benefit readers at all levels and can serve as a basis for scholarly research.