American history classes typically teach that the original transcontinental railroad was a major triumph. What they don‘t say ...

“If one argues that history is sort of a prism—that you look at the past in order to understand the present and the future—go no further than the transcontinental railroad,” says ...

When the signal from the spike came through, the cannons fired. The world was put on notice: the transcontinental railroad was completed and America was moving to the forefront of the world's stage.

Out of racial prejudice, Central Pacific leadership had initially ... The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad,” which was just published. These immigrants played a ...

In this excerpt from the book's fourth chapter, Twain describes his 1861 journey by mule-drawn express mail coach, in the days before the railroad, and compares it to a newspaper article from the ...