Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

What readers think of The Race Underground, plus links to write your own review.

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Race Underground by Doug Most

The Race Underground

Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway

by Doug Most
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (26):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 4, 2014, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2015, 432 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

Page 4 of 4
There are currently 26 reader reviews for The Race Underground
Order Reviews by:

Write your own review!

Patricia H. (Norman, OK)

Blood, Swear and Fears Underground
"The Race Underground" is a critical and detailed examination of two cities engaged in an intense rivalry in the late 19th century. New York and Boston, at the time this adventure started, were both dirty and crowed cities. Horse draw streetcars had been the basic means of transportation for over 50 years leaving little to the image the suffocating stench. Alfred Beach, publisher of Scientific American, had a dream of using an underground system But many challenges lie in his way from political to technological to the inbred fear of being underground. His dream comes to fruition in the tale of two brothers, one successful the other not so much, two cities and two subways. This is a detailed account of how New York and Boston tunneled their way into a transformation from the pre-industrial to a world of new possibilities.
Laurie F. (Brookline, MA)

Good Story for Bostonians and New Yorkers
The Race Underground is a good historical account of the characters involved in the early days of mass transit in the cities of Boston and New York. I wonder if the book would appeal to those not familiar with these great American cities.
I must confess I am from the Brookline/Boston area where much of the events took place so I found the background quite interesting yet the writing style was not as fine-tuned as it could have been missing the flow of a well-seasoned author.

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

The low brow and the high brow

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.