The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge Book

If you haven't read a book by David McCullough you are missing a VERY good author. He writes non-fiction. He works in collaboration with a large staff. Some people may call that cheating, but I don't care b/c everything he writes is thoroughly investigated, interesting and expressed with flair. His books are never dry, never boring. He knows what to put in and what to leave out. Here he writes about the Brooklyn Bridge! How in the world can you write about a bridge and make it fascinating? He has succeeded. Again!

The book covers all the details related to the making of the Brooklyn Bridge, from conception to completion. It is also a biography of two amazing people, John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869), a German immigrant and engineer who conceived of and designed the bridge, and his son Washington Augustus Roebling (1837-1926) who was the chief engineer during the bridge's construction from 1869-1883. It is also about Emily Warren Roebling, Washington's first wife; she played an essential role in the making of the bridge! It is a book about the two cities, New York City and Brooklyn, which came to be linked by the creation of the bridge. It is about the political corruption of the era. I am sure you've heard of the shenanigans of Tammany Hall, well here they are again. People that really get you mad! It is about how the bridge forever changed New York City. It was a time of great innovation played out and shaped by the people of this great metropolis. The bigwigs, the politicians, the business men, the artisans, the immigrants, the small people and the big, the dreamers and the workers.

Read this book to meet Washington Roebling! His engagement is utterly inspirational. When mistakes were made he never shirked his responsibility and he wanted the Board of Trustees to shoulder their responsibility too.

In making a solid foundation for the bridge, workers excavated the riverbed using massive wooden boxes called caissons. These airtight chambers were pressed to the river's floor by mammoth granite blocks; pressurized air was pumped in to keep water and rubble out. Workers succumbed to what is today known as "caisson disease", "decompression sickness" or "the bends": joint pain, numbness, paralysis, convulsions and sometimes death. Very little of this was understood then. In 1870 Washington Roebling worked from within a caisson to extinguish a fire that had broken out. Working often alongside men in the caissons he too came to suffer from the disease, as well as other nervous ailments.

I would have appreciated a more in-depth discussion of his medical problems resulting from "decompression sickness". Probably he also suffered from what is known as neurasthenia and perhaps secondary drug addiction. Due to his illnesses he worked in close corroboration with his wife holding his position as chief engineer "in absentia"! That he could later in 1921 become president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company at age 84 is hard to comprehend! It is for this reason I would have liked a fuller understanding of what afflicted him!

I did have trouble sometimes understanding the minute and detailed description of the component parts of the bridge construction. Yet I never felt that even the details which I didn't completely understand should be removed. A picture says simply what a thousand words try to explain. I did look in internet for detailed drawings but you need more than just a diagram. What you really need is someone pointing out the respective parts of the diagram to fully understand. Listening and listening and still not completely understanding was frustrating to me.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Nelson Runger. He does a totally fantastic job. He reads slowly. He reads clearly. He reads with feeling. When the bridge is completed, the author's lines and Runger's intonation allows one to appreciate the beauty and the magnificence of what had been created. There was a huge celebration with firecrackers, with bells tolling, whistles shrilling, firecrackers, tugs tooting, children scrambling and huge crowds marveling at the spectacle! I felt like I was there. When the electric lights of the bridge were first illuminated I could feel the wonder of the lights and the two dark stone towers, along with the thousands that watched.

An epilog completes the book so you know what happens to the central characters in the years after the bridge is completed.