A review by wildweasel105
Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H. Chang
5.0
This is an historical account of how the Chinese immigrants impacted the success of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869. Gordon Chang's exhaustive research documents the incredible hardships, the suffering and sacrifice that the Chinese workers faced when they were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad between 1863 and 1869.
This book is astounding on several accounts. One example is the fact that the tens of thousands of Chinese who toiled to lay the railroad bed and track from Sacramento California to Promontory Pass, Utah did so under the most grueling of conditions, including tunneling UNDER the Sierra Nevada mountain range...in the winter! Another example is the fact that although the joining of the East and the West by the first continuous railroad was a fantastic feat in itself, the Chinese actually get very little credit in a historical sense.
Gordon Chang sets out to reverse that error, and without undue emphasis on the social disparity these immigrants faced in California's early years, he challenges the reader to consider that without the Chinese labor force, the Transcontinental Railroad's outcome may have been severely changed.
This book is astounding on several accounts. One example is the fact that the tens of thousands of Chinese who toiled to lay the railroad bed and track from Sacramento California to Promontory Pass, Utah did so under the most grueling of conditions, including tunneling UNDER the Sierra Nevada mountain range...in the winter! Another example is the fact that although the joining of the East and the West by the first continuous railroad was a fantastic feat in itself, the Chinese actually get very little credit in a historical sense.
Gordon Chang sets out to reverse that error, and without undue emphasis on the social disparity these immigrants faced in California's early years, he challenges the reader to consider that without the Chinese labor force, the Transcontinental Railroad's outcome may have been severely changed.