Monday, September 5, 2011

Blood On The Tracks (kindle Single) - Cecelia Holland

blood on the tracks (kindle single) - cecelia holland
blood on the tracks (kindle single) - cecelia holland

Twelve years after the Civil War ended, while the U.S. was deep in a depression, the owners of the four largest railroads met in New York and agreed to cut their workers’ salaries by 10 percent. Blood on the Tracks immerses readers in the physically and emotionally charged struggle that soon followed--the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Cecelia Holland, a prolific writer of historical novels, turns this forgotten chapter of history into an impossibly interesting study of gritty American life before big government, unions, or business regulation. Holland’s vivid descriptions bring to life the seething anger of the mobs and their battles to control the lines. She renders the chaos of the strike in individual vignettes of drunkards, angry workers, curious onlookers, sheriffs disabused of power, militiamen who put down their arms to join the resistance, and men cajoled by the railroad bosses to take up arms against the crowd. The piece ends with a witty yet stern rebuke of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, which used the story of a fictional rail line to champion a belief that profit is the best motivator (and Laissez-faire the best economic climate) for humanity. --Paul Diamond

DOWNLOAD BLOOD ON THE TRACKS (KINDLE SINGLE) - CECELIA HOLLAND

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