"Do not think of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a business enterprise," Forbes magazine informed its readers in May 1936. "Think of it as a nation." At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. In 1914, the PRR employed more than two hundred thousand people—more than double the number of soldiers in the United States Army. As the self-proclaimed "Standard Railroad of the World," this colossal corporate body underwrote American industrial expansion and shaped the economic, political, and social environment of the United States. In turn, the PRR was fundamentally shaped by the American landscape, adapting to geography as well as shifts in competitive economics and public policy. Albert J. Churella's masterful account, certain to become the authoritative history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, illuminates broad themes in American history, from the development of managerial practices and labor relations to the relationship between business and government to advances in technology and transportation. Churella situates exhaustive archival research on the Pennsylvania Railroad within the social, economic, and technological changes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, chronicling the epic history of the PRR intertwined with that of a developing nation. This first volume opens with the development of the Main Line of Public Works, devised by Pennsylvanians in the 1820s to compete with the Erie Canal. Though a public rather than a private enterprise, the Main Line foreshadowed the establishment of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846. Over the next decades, as the nation weathered the Civil War, industrial expansion, and labor unrest, the PRR expanded despite competition with rival railroads and disputes with such figures as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. The dawn of the twentieth century brought a measure of stability to the railroad industry, enabling the creation of such architectural monuments as Pennsylvania Station in New York City. The volume closes at the threshold of American involvement in World War I, as the strategies that PRR executives had perfected in previous decades proved less effective at guiding the company through increasingly tumultuous economic and political waters.

Miss Killikelly’s book is more than a history of Pittsburgh, and all but serves as a history of Allegheny County, of which Pittsburgh has long been the metropolis, and which since the creation of the Greater Pittsburgh — brought about since this book was published — stands more than ever as the expression of the civic activities of its adjacent territory. With the chief facts of the early history of Pittsburgh, especially with those that center around Fort Duquesne, most readers of Pennsylvania history are fairly familiar. The story of these early days lose nothing in Miss Killikelly's retelling. Very marvelous, indeed, has been the growth of this great Pennsylvania city. A record of its population in 1761 gives the number of men as 324, the women 92 and children 47, living outside the garrison; the number of houses with owners' names was 220. At this period the town was divided into a Lower and Upper Town; the "King's Gardens" stretching along the Allegheny, with a background of wheatfields. The residence of the commandant, a substantial brick building within the fort, was the most pretentious house. In 1815 the population had increased to nearly 10,000. The subsequent history of this city is too detailed to be summarized. Miss Killikelly tells the story in ample manner, yet without any overloading of unessential facts. Her pages throb with the active, busy life that has made Pittsburgh so pre-eminently a manufacturing center, and she tells the story of its commercial, industrial and cultural progress with the skill of a practiced writer. Pittsburgh is probably the most misunderstood city in the United States, and Miss Killikelly is entitled to cordial thanks for her entirely readable account.

Ed Simon tells the story of Pittsburgh through this exploration of its hidden histories--the LA Review of Books calls it an "epic, atomic history of the Steel City." The land surrounding the confluence of the