Tom Paine's Iron Bridge: Building a United States

by Edward G. Gray Narrated by Tom Perkins

Overview

When Tom Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1774, the city was America's largest port. Unfortunately, the seasonal dangers of the rivers dividing the region were becoming an obstacle to the city's continued growth. Philadelphia needed a practical connection between the rich grain of Pennsylvania's backcountry farms and its port on the Delaware. The iron bridge was his solution.

The bridge was part of Paine's answer to the central political challenge of the new nation: how to sustain a republic as large and as geographically fragmented as the United States. The iron construction was his brilliant response to the age-old challenge of bridge technology: how to build a structure strong enough to withstand the constant battering of water, ice, and wind.

The convergence of political and technological design in Paine's plan was Enlightenment genius. His dream ultimately was a casualty of the vicious political crosscurrents of revolution and the American penchant for bridges of cheap, plentiful wood, but his innovative iron design became the model for bridge construction in Britain as it led the world into the industrial revolution.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

01/04/2016
Many Americans think of Tom Paine as a great champion of independence from Britain, and as a skilled firebrand. Gray (Colonial America: A History in Documents), professor of history at Florida State University, brings the radical pamphleteer alive as an architect of iron bridges. He makes a good case that Paine’s hopes for the infant United States went beyond its political independence. Wanting also to help unite the country, Paine applied his amateur design skills to the idea of physically knitting together the American territory. Understanding that the nation’s many rivers were obstacles to commerce as well as avenues of transportation, he saw the need to bridge them. Unfortunately, hard luck, ideological battles, difficulties with public authorities (in the U.S., Britain, and France), and an inveterate penury thwarted Paine’s schemes. But as he’d proved in his political writings, his visions were sound even if his execution of them was not. Others in the U.S. and elsewhere eventually erected iron bridges, some at least modestly influenced by his designs and models. Gray’s prose is lively; the solid tale he tells may be of no major significance to a broader historical understanding, but it adds to the body of knowledge about a passionate man and the tumultuous era in which he lived. Illus. (Apr.)

Wall Street Journal - Kathleen DuVal

"Fascinating and important: Gray gives us Paine as we have never seen him before…as committed to building a new order as he was to tearing down the old."

Ray Raphael

"If you thought nothing more could be said of Thomas Paine, you were wrong. Ed Gray’s new book is a game-changer. An iron bridge, a unified economy, a legislative heart of the union: Ed Gray demonstrates as never before Paine’s greater vision."

Alan Taylor

"Ed Gray deftly reveals Paine as a polymath who designed innovative bridges as well as radical politics. Vividly written and rich with insight, Tom Paine’s Iron Bridge illuminates the nexus of politics, science, and aesthetics in the Age of Revolutions."

Woody Holton

"Americans want to see the nation’s adolescence as a time of infinite possibility, and so did Thomas Paine. But Edward Gray’s engrossing account of Paine’s lifelong fixation on bridge-building reminds us that a host of human vices, from religious bigotry to political and sectional bias, were always there, waiting as patiently as the wolf at the door."

Gordon S. Wood

"Another gem from one of America's most imaginative historians."

Harvey J. Kaye

"In his engaging new book, Edward Gray introduces us to Thomas Paine, the visionary nation-builder. Paine’s design for an iron bridge to transcend the new nation’s divisions was in its way as revolutionary as his call for an independent American republic in Common Sense."

Library Journal

02/01/2016
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) is renowned for his pamphlet Common Sense, which ignited revolutionary spirit and inspired America to declare independence from Britain, but Gray (history, Florida State Univ.; The Making of John Ledyard) focuses on Paine's crusade to build an innovative iron bridge across the Schuylkill River, connecting Pennsylvania's western agricultural region with its commercial east. This book is not merely a treatment of Paine's architectural career, but an explanation of how it stemmed from, and was derailed by, his work as a political writer and activist. Contrary to Paine's detractors, Gray argues that Paine was motivated by selfless concern for the common good and the stability of the republic. Therefore, his interest in bridges was an extension of, not a departure from, his political thought. After his misinterpreted support of the French Revolution and controversial radical writings, Paine's reputation was shattered, along with his hopes for financial and political backing for his iron bridge. VERDICT This small book covers broad and seemingly disparate territory, but Gray skillfully weaves Paine's ideology, altruism, and concern for the preservation of liberty. A valuable addition to academic and popular collections.—Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

Gray’s brief audiobook shows Thomas Paine’s part in two revolutions, the American and the French, but focuses on his attempt to build iron bridges of his own innovative design, especially one across the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. Tom Perkins gives a solid reading, well paced and adept at clearly rendering the sense of the text through his inflections and shaping of sentences. He gives quotations more volume and force than other text, which makes the people quoted seem overwrought, and at times his breathing is distractingly audible. Perkins elongates some vowel sounds that oddly interrupt this standard American accent. Still, his reading is basically intelligent and sturdy, conveying the text effectively. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-01-02
The story of a man committed to transforming the landscape of the new world. Besides being a gadfly, political theorist, and enormously popular pamphleteer, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an architect, determined to design an iron bridge, economically crucial, over the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. Gray (History/Florida State Univ.; New World Babel: Languages and Nations in Early America, 2014, etc.) sets Paine's engineering project against a backdrop of political turmoil as the Colonies struggled for independence and responded to the French Revolution. In 1775, the prospect of breaking ties with Great Britain generated fierce controversy. "To separate from the United Kingdom," many colonists thought, "was to challenge the political wisdom of centuries," which held that a "hereditary monarchy [was] the only way to political stability." Paine's Common Sense, published in 1776, contested that view, and within a year, up to 150,000 copies were circulated, with huge impact. Over the next six years, he followed with a series of 13 essays called The American Crisis, exhorting Americans "that theirs was the just cause" and bolstering the morale of beleaguered troops. Paine never grew wealthy from his writing, always returning profits to his publishers to ensure continued printings. As much as he inspired his countrymen, he incited detractors, and by the 1780s, he sought to break with his radical past. "The quiet field of science has more amusement to my mind than politics," he declared. But although he poured his energies into designing an iron bridge, he could not fully break from politics: Rights of Man appeared in 1791, with a printing of between 100,000 and 200,000 in three years. The Age of Reason was published in 1794; "among the fiercest attacks on organized Christianity ever written," it earned him new enemies. Although the author repeatedly shifts the focus to Paine's engineering project, he inevitably returns to the more compelling facts of Paine's political career. A fresh look at an influential political activist.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171738891
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	04/25/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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