About this item
In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew more congested, the streets became clogged with plodding, horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 crippled the entire northeast, a solution had to be found. Two brothers from one of the nation's great families - Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York - pursued the dream of his city digging America's first subway, and the great race was on. The competition between Boston and New York played out in an era not unlike our own, one of economic upheaval, life-changing innovations, class warfare, bitter political tensions, and the question of America's place in the world.
About the Author
Doug Most is a veteran journalist and now a deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe. He's worked at papers in Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and New Jersey, and written for national magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Parents, and Runner's World. "The Race Underground" is the story of two great American cities struggling with dangerously overcrowded neighborhoods, and desperately searching for relief, and ultimately finding it through the painstaking construction of tunnels beneath their streets. Most's first book, "Always in our Hearts," was a true-crime story in New Jersey about two teenagers who concealed their pregnancy from their parents and killed their baby.
