Americans on the Move: A History of Waterways, Railways, and Highways

by Russell Bourne

In Americans on the Move, Russell Bourne traces the history of transportation in America from the colonial years before the American Revolution to the present. This book, which includes rare photographs and maps from the Library of Congress (many of which have never been seen before by the public), explores the inventions, enthusiasms, and myths that have kept Americans on the move.

44 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 1995

About the author

Russell Bourne began his career as a writer-editor on LIFE Magazine in 1950. Career interrupted by the Korean War, he operated as a Special Agent in the US Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps in Berlin until 1953. He then returned to Time, Inc and served as Henry Luce’s assistant at Time-Life Books and went on to run several publishing departments for American Heritage, National Geographic and Smithsonian. In the 1980s, he began creating books on his own and published about a dozen works, mostly on American History and Transportation, while also writing poetry. His poems have been published in reviews and journals across the country. He was a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. For many years his habit has been to spend summers in Maine and winters in the Finger Lakes.

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is rare that I find a book, whose physical appearance might be best described as one of those picture-heavy tomes that sits comfortably on a coffee table or a waiting room, used as a college text and possessed of a surprising amount of detail.

At this point in my educational "career" I've been exposed to dense texts on unionization, the political aspects of transport in the US, and certain other college-level texts that pick the nits of certain finer details surrounding how we managed to get where we are. This text, though, did a really good job of not repeating all that minutiae to reach a satisfying overarching perspective of how we got where we are (at least, circa 1995 when the book was published).

I think it is fair to say that this book happened before the big transition to electric vehicles. It is certainly before COVID, one (and possibly two now) recessions, and a fistful of dollars put into biking infrastructure. It could use a refresh certainly. Even so, I recommend it as a good read.