Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life

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Viking, 1997 - History - 354 pages
In Divided Highways, Tom Lewis tells the monumental story of the largest engineered structure ever built: the Interstate Highway System. Here is one of the great untold tales of American enterprise, recounted entirely through the stories of the human beings who thought up, mapped out, poured, paved - and tried to stop - the Interstates. Conceived and spearheaded by Thomas "the Chief" MacDonald, the iron-willed bureaucrat from the muddy farmlands of Iowa who rose to unrivaled power, the highway system was propelled forward through the pathbreaking efforts of brilliant engineers, argued over by politicians of every ideological and moral stripe, reviled by the citizens whose lives it devastated, and lauded as the greatest public works project in U.S. history.

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Contents

PART 3
175
Revolt
179
Busting the Trust
211
Copyright

6 other sections not shown

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About the author (1997)

Tom Lewis is a professor of English at Skidmore College and an active documentary filmmaker. He has worked with Ken Burns on three films, including Empire of the Air, which was based on his last book. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

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