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A review by wyntrchylde
The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas by Eric Rutkow
informative
slow-paced
3.0
The Longest Line on the Map
Author: Eric Rutlow
Publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster
Publishing Date: 2019
=======================
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Why this book:
I’m on a nonfiction kick, seem to be getting more enjoyment out of them than fiction. Love travelogs, but this one turned out to be more history and politics than travelog.
_________________
The Feel:
Told the story they wanted to tell rather than the one promised in the title.
Least Favorite Character:
Most of the Oligarchs of rail and finance who appear in these pages are severe bastards. Same with the politicos involved. Whole lot of colonial thinking, moving pieces around on a chessboard and borders and lines around on the map, with no regard for those pieces and lines representing people’s lives.
The blustery Congressman/Senator who gins up a storm of conspiracy, forces hearings, lets fly accusation after accusation, and then, the report doesn't move the charges he made forwards in a way that they could go before a judge at a criminal proceeding is classic. Horrid. But classic.
We Can’t Go On Together With Suspicious Minds:
Whole lotta dragging of the feet and talking about other stuff before it gets to the Pan-American Highway. Railroads, and the politics and science of American roadways and highways. Halfway through the book before the concept of a Pan-American Highway is even broached and, even then, it is all about politics rather than the surveying, logistics, materials, and route of the actual highway. I realize that in international circumstances all of that is part and parcel, but we’re over 200+ pages deep.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
If they wanted to write a Pan-American Railroad book, they should have. Doing 140+ pages of that as preamble seems a bit much. Lot of good info there, but not really, truly on topic. Same with a history of roadbuilding and science of roadbuilding, both of these could have been done in service to the story of the Pan-American highway story, instead of taking the entire middle section of the book, after the preamble was taken up by the railroads and dreams of a Pan-American Railroad, instead of the titular subject matter.
Tropes:
The historical namedropping is large in the overly large, off-topic section on railroads, railroading, and colonialism. Not unwarranted, but some of the famous names that cameo, wander around the extreme edges of the narrative, and then disappear, doesn’t exactly advance the story.
Turd in the Punchbowl:
Spends the entire first third of the book mired in the aborted history of the Pan-American Railroads fits and starts and bits and pieces, and sidelighting to the Panama Canal before we even get to the idea of the Pan-American Highway. This is going a long way to justify the last line of the subtitle, The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas.
Wisdom:
Dictators for life and American tycoons made life hell for the peoples of Central America during the so-called Gilded Age.
Juxtaposition:
Whole lotta financial speculating dressed up in high ideals butting up against realities on the ground.
The names dropped in the railroading section are huge, mythic, American historical figures…while the ones in the roadbuilding history and science section, not so much.
Anachronism:
Bicyclist vs Farmer evolving into Farmer vs Motorist in the Good Roads movement.
Logic Gaps:
The jingoistic crap epitomized by the purported French and British awestruckedness at the nascent American roadbuilding ingenuity while both having multiple orders of magnitude more usable, driveable, and better conditioned roads than America is an asinine assertion that I’m sure played well to the rubes reading the newspapers, biographies, and monographs of that era.
Questions and Answers:
Why wouldn’t you build bridges across the Panama Canal as part of the construction of the canal in the first place?
The Unexpected:
The Pan-American Highway…except for this little 250 mile wide piece.
Forgotten Lesson/Forgotten Common Sense:
Missed Opportunity:
Barely a hundred pages left and the author hasn’t done more than talk platitudes and politics of the South American part of the Pan-American Highway. Short shrift is being given to that. Once the focus of the books shifted away from the railroads and onto the highway, it bogged down in Central America and stayed there. It is interesting, but it isn’t completing the road, which won’t be completed anyway thanks to the Darien Gap. The highway, while it is traversable all the way to Panama and across the canal, doesn’t connect into Columbia through the swamps and rivers of the Darien Gap.
_________________
Last Page Sound:
Well...so…they never really finished it. Went into this wanting more travelogue than history. I like history, just not what I was here for with this one. Got too much Gilded Age, Robber Baron than I really would have preferred. And spent way too much time on the railroads. Totally left out what happened in South America, whether the road networks down there became interconnected or not in this period. “Pan-American”, in name only.
Author Assessment:
I enjoyed the writing and the story, but the essay seemed to wander from its purported focus and lose itself in side quests along the way
Author: Eric Rutlow
Publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster
Publishing Date: 2019
=======================
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Why this book:
I’m on a nonfiction kick, seem to be getting more enjoyment out of them than fiction. Love travelogs, but this one turned out to be more history and politics than travelog.
_________________
The Feel:
Told the story they wanted to tell rather than the one promised in the title.
Least Favorite Character:
Most of the Oligarchs of rail and finance who appear in these pages are severe bastards. Same with the politicos involved. Whole lot of colonial thinking, moving pieces around on a chessboard and borders and lines around on the map, with no regard for those pieces and lines representing people’s lives.
The blustery Congressman/Senator who gins up a storm of conspiracy, forces hearings, lets fly accusation after accusation, and then, the report doesn't move the charges he made forwards in a way that they could go before a judge at a criminal proceeding is classic. Horrid. But classic.
We Can’t Go On Together With Suspicious Minds:
Whole lotta dragging of the feet and talking about other stuff before it gets to the Pan-American Highway. Railroads, and the politics and science of American roadways and highways. Halfway through the book before the concept of a Pan-American Highway is even broached and, even then, it is all about politics rather than the surveying, logistics, materials, and route of the actual highway. I realize that in international circumstances all of that is part and parcel, but we’re over 200+ pages deep.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
If they wanted to write a Pan-American Railroad book, they should have. Doing 140+ pages of that as preamble seems a bit much. Lot of good info there, but not really, truly on topic. Same with a history of roadbuilding and science of roadbuilding, both of these could have been done in service to the story of the Pan-American highway story, instead of taking the entire middle section of the book, after the preamble was taken up by the railroads and dreams of a Pan-American Railroad, instead of the titular subject matter.
Tropes:
The historical namedropping is large in the overly large, off-topic section on railroads, railroading, and colonialism. Not unwarranted, but some of the famous names that cameo, wander around the extreme edges of the narrative, and then disappear, doesn’t exactly advance the story.
Turd in the Punchbowl:
Spends the entire first third of the book mired in the aborted history of the Pan-American Railroads fits and starts and bits and pieces, and sidelighting to the Panama Canal before we even get to the idea of the Pan-American Highway. This is going a long way to justify the last line of the subtitle, The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas.
Wisdom:
Dictators for life and American tycoons made life hell for the peoples of Central America during the so-called Gilded Age.
Juxtaposition:
Whole lotta financial speculating dressed up in high ideals butting up against realities on the ground.
The names dropped in the railroading section are huge, mythic, American historical figures…while the ones in the roadbuilding history and science section, not so much.
Anachronism:
Bicyclist vs Farmer evolving into Farmer vs Motorist in the Good Roads movement.
Logic Gaps:
The jingoistic crap epitomized by the purported French and British awestruckedness at the nascent American roadbuilding ingenuity while both having multiple orders of magnitude more usable, driveable, and better conditioned roads than America is an asinine assertion that I’m sure played well to the rubes reading the newspapers, biographies, and monographs of that era.
Questions and Answers:
Why wouldn’t you build bridges across the Panama Canal as part of the construction of the canal in the first place?
The Unexpected:
The Pan-American Highway…except for this little 250 mile wide piece.
Forgotten Lesson/Forgotten Common Sense:
Missed Opportunity:
Barely a hundred pages left and the author hasn’t done more than talk platitudes and politics of the South American part of the Pan-American Highway. Short shrift is being given to that. Once the focus of the books shifted away from the railroads and onto the highway, it bogged down in Central America and stayed there. It is interesting, but it isn’t completing the road, which won’t be completed anyway thanks to the Darien Gap. The highway, while it is traversable all the way to Panama and across the canal, doesn’t connect into Columbia through the swamps and rivers of the Darien Gap.
_________________
Last Page Sound:
Well...so…they never really finished it. Went into this wanting more travelogue than history. I like history, just not what I was here for with this one. Got too much Gilded Age, Robber Baron than I really would have preferred. And spent way too much time on the railroads. Totally left out what happened in South America, whether the road networks down there became interconnected or not in this period. “Pan-American”, in name only.
Author Assessment:
I enjoyed the writing and the story, but the essay seemed to wander from its purported focus and lose itself in side quests along the way