The City, the River, the Bridge
Author: Patrick Nunnally
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 0816667667
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExploring the university's role in understanding how disasters impact communities.
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The I-35W Bridge Collapse
Author: Kimberly J. Brown (Journalist)
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2018-07-01
Total Pages: 408
ISBN-13: 1640120696
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"A bridge shouldn't just fall down," Senator Amy Klobuchar said after the August 1, 2007, collapse of the Minneapolis I-35W eight-lane steel truss bridge, which killed 13 motorists, injured 145, and left a collective wound on the city's psyche and infrastructure. On her way to a soccer game with a fellow teammate, Kimberly J. Brown experienced the collapse firsthand, falling 114 feet in her teammate's car to the Mississippi River. Although terrified, injured, and in shock, she survived. In this sobering memoir and exposé, Brown recounts her harrowing experience. In the aftermath of the disaster, Brown became both an advocate for survivors and an unofficial whistle-blower about decaying infrastructure. She details her investigation and correspondence with Thornton Tomasetti engineers, including the false official account of the collapse and the eventual revelation of its real causes. In addition, she chronicles the ongoing decay of America's bridges and the continuing challenges faced by leaders to address infrastructure problems across the country. After nearly a decade of research into the collapse and her active and ongoing recovery from psychic and physical injuries, Brown shares her experience and answers the questions we should all be asking: Why did this bridge collapse? And what could have been done to prevent this tragedy?
Wood, Concrete, Stone, and Steel
Author: Denis Gardner
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 238
ISBN-13: 081664666X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLike never before we are aware of the crucial place of bridges in our lives. The spans that warranted little notice are now at the forefront of public and political debate and we are reminded of the rich history-and the uncertain future-of bridging in Minnesota. Historian Denis P. Gardner documents and celebrates a wide range of the state’s rural and urban spans, telling the remarkable stories of their construction and impact on Minnesota life and culture. From Pratt trusses to bowstring arches, Wood, Concrete, Stone, and Steel describes nearly every bridge type found in Minnesota, including railroad spans, and features more than 225 illustrations of historical and extant bridges. Gardner details the development of engineering and construction innovations (complete with a guide to trusses) and traces the fascinating politics and personalities behind the task of creating and maintaining safe, and often beautiful, crossings. Through arresting photographs and lively narrative, Gardner makes a compelling argument for the value of preserving our bridges and the cultural heritage they carry and brings to life their importance in Minnesota’s past, present, and future. Denis P. Gardner is an award-winning historian who has documented properties for the National Register of Historic Places and the Historic American Engineering Record. He is the author of Minnesota Treasures: Stories behind the State’s Historic Places. Eric DeLony is former director of the Historic American Engineering Record.
Collapse of I-35W Highway Bridge, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 1, 2007
Author: United States. National Transportation Safety Board
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the early afternoon, construction equipment and construction aggregates (sand and gravel for making concrete) were delivered and positioned in the two closed inside southbound lanes. The equipment and aggregates, which were being staged for a concrete pour of the southbound lanes that was to begin about 7:00 p.m., were positioned toward the south end of the center section of the deck truss portion of the bridge and were in place by about 2:30 p.m. About 6:05 p.m., a motion-activated surveillance video camera at the Lower St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, just west of the I-35W bridge, recorded a portion of the collapse sequence. The video showed the bridge center span separating from the rest of the bridge and falling into the river.
Upper Mississippi River Navigation Charts
Author: United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Rock Island District
Publisher:
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Bohemian Flats
Author: Mary Relindes Ellis
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Published: 2014-04-15
Total Pages: 383
ISBN-13: 1452942102
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn The Bohemian Flats, Mary Relindes Ellis’s rich, imaginative gift carries us from the bourgeois world of fin de siècle Germany to a vibrant immigrant enclave in the heart of the Midwest and to the killing fields of World War I. Shell shock, as it was called, lands Raimund Kaufmann in a London hospital, a victim of the war but also of his own, and his brother’s, efforts to get out of Germany and build a new life in America. While his recovery eludes him, his memory returns us to Minneapolis, to the Flats, a milling community on the Mississippi River, where Raimund and his brother Albert have sought respite from the oppressive hand of their older brother, now the master of the family farm and brewery. In Minnesota the brothers confront different forms of prejudice, but they also find a chance to remake their lives according to their own principles and wishes—until the war makes their German roots inescapable. Following these lives, The Bohemian Flats conjures both the sweep of irresistible history and the intimate reality of a man, and a family, caught up in it. From a nineteenth-century German farm to the thriving, wildly diverse immigrant village below Minneapolis on the Mississippi to the European front in World War I, and returning to twentieth-century America—this is a story that takes a reader to the far reaches of human experience and the depths of the human heart.
The Bohemian Flats
Author: Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Minnesota
Publisher:
Published: 1941
Total Pages: 78
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKImmortal River
Author: Calvin R. Fremling
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2004-12-31
Total Pages: 452
ISBN-13: 9780299202941
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis engaging and well-illustrated primer to the Upper Mississippi River presents the basic natural and human history of this magnificent waterway. Immortal River is written for the educated lay-person who would like to know more about the river's history and the forces that shape as well as threaten it today. It melds complex information from the fields of geology, ecology, geography, anthropology, and history into a readable, chronological story that spans some 500 million years of the earth's history. Like the Mississippi itself, Immortal River often leaves the main channel to explore the river's backwaters, floodplain, and drainage basin. The book's focus is the Upper Mississippi, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois. But it also includes information about the river's headwaters in northern Minnesota and about the Lower Mississippi from Cairo south to the river's mouth ninety miles below New Orleans. It offers an understanding of the basic geology underlying the river's landscapes, ecology, environmental problems, and grandeur.
River of History
Author: John O. Anfinson
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy We Drive
Author: Andy Singer
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
Published: 2014-11-29
Total Pages: 161
ISBN-13: 1621061353
DOWNLOAD EBOOKToday, we're married to our cars. But life behind the wheel of an automobile didn't come naturally to Americans. Crooked politicians, unscrupulous businessmen, burning streetcars, and convoluted tax shenanigans are a few of the players in this gripping tale of corruption, greed, and endless miles of asphalt. In Andy Singer's accessible, scandalous tale of motordom, comics, text, and historic photographs tell the story of the rise of the U.S. highway system and the corresponding demise of rail and public transportation. He also explores how we can ditch the car and rebuild a functional transportation system that can bring wealth, happiness, and freedom.
