History Comics: The Transcontinental Railroad: Crossing the Divide

by Andy Hirsch

Overview

Turn back the clock with History Comics! In this graphic novel, experience the great railroad race between Central Pacific and Union Pacific. Wealth and glory await whichever builds the longest track!

In 1863, America is divided not just by the civil war but by months of travel over thousands of miles. Two railroad companies, one each from East and West, are given the task of connecting the nation by rail. Building this railroad will be a monumental undertaking, difficult and dangerous. The work falls to immigrant laborers from the lowest economic classes. They accomplish astounding feats of engineering while waiting for an answer: Will those who connect the country be accepted into it?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250794765
Publisher:	First Second
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Series:	History Comics
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,070,825
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	9 - 13 Years

About the Author

Andy Hirsch is a cartoonist living in Dallas, Texas. He is the author and illustrator of many entries across First Second’s Science Comics and History Comics series, including Dogs: From Predator to Protector, Cats: Nature and Nurture, and The American Bison: The Buffalo’s Survival Tale.

Editorial Reviews

A Junior Library Guild selection

"Exhilarated readers will come away with clear enough pictures of the project’s costs and benefits to decide whether the one was worth the other. Suspenseful, grand of scope, and related with cinematic brio." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2022-09-14
The story of one of our country’s greatest infrastructure projects, from “mad dream” to golden spike.

Hirsch doesn’t gloss over the enterprise’s rampant financial chicanery, undisguised exploitation of Irish and Chinese immigrants, and environmental damage—even adding an afterword that highlights them—but by and large he plays this account of the rail line’s Civil War–era conception and construction as a breathless, epic race between two teams of racially and culturally diverse hired workers, punctuated by fiendish conniving, remarkable feats of engineering, and broad comedy. Hirsch parades a cast of colorfully wrought historical figures ranging from the Union Pacific Railroad’s larger than life Chief Engineer Peter Dey (“Shh! He’s envisioning!” comments an awed bystander) to the Central Pacific’s hard-driving Construction Superintendent J.H. Strobridge, whose “TOOT!”-threaded fulminations evidently signal serious intestinal issues. Through tumultuous cartoon panels, the author/illustrator follows the progress of Irish war veteran Tom coming east and “Gold Mountain” seeker Lim, from China, to stand in for the workers as they face hardships both natural and otherwise on the way to a climactic handshake in the final scene. Exhilarated readers will come away with clear enough pictures of the project’s costs and benefits to decide whether the one was worth the other.

Suspenseful, grand of scope, and related with cinematic brio. (Graphic nonfiction. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews