This is only the second David McCollough book I’ve ever read, and my motivation for it was exactly the same as with the last one: someone is planning on adapting it into a feature film. Unlike that other film, though, a biopic of Teddy Roosevelt’s years in the Dakotas that has disappeared from the American Film Company website, this one has an announced starring cast. *fangirl drumroll* DANIEL RADCLIFFE as Washington Roebling. Need I say more? Well, all right, that Oscar winner Sir Ben Kingsley

In an age when simply knowing a lot about something is enough to see you denigrated and dismissed, it's nice to read a work of history celebrating the Expert and the Expert's achievements. It's also telling to read that political wits even in the second half of the 19th century were aware of this, with a journalist saying one engineer like John Roebling was worth more than a hall of bickering, petulant politicians.I don't have little to add other than that. Like all of McCullough's works, this i...

A well spun tale of vision, dedication, brilliance, hard work and achievement. The stories of John Roebling and Washington Roebling, the designers and builders of the Brooklyn Bridge take their place among the stories of the great men who built America. McCullough delivers on the human and the technical front, although the construction details can get tedious at times. The Brooklyn Bridge was a pinnacle of engineering success and a monument to the times. In addition to the bridge and its creator...

The book The Great Bridge by David McCullough was a very detailed account of the long and troublesome building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It starts with John Roebling and his design and plans for the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. When he eventually passes away his son Washington Roebling takes over and continues where his father left off. Washington Roebling and his team encounter many different problems and political situation that add time and frustration to the total time it will take to buil...

If you haven't read a book by David McCullough you are missing a VERY good author. He writes non-fiction. He works in collaboration with a large staff. Some people may call that cheating, but I don't care b/c everything he writes is thoroughly investigated, interesting and expressed with flair. His books are never dry, never boring. He knows what to put in and what to leave out. Here he writes about the Brooklyn Bridge! How in the world can you write about a bridge and make it fascinating? He ha...

When I picked up this book, I was daring McCullough to get me to read the whole thing. How could a 562 page book about a bridge -- not to meantion an antiquated bridge, not the modern technological wonders of today -- keep me going that long, I thought? Yet I had heard reviews...I had to find out what they were talking about. I finished the book in two weeks, and as it turns out, it's not just a book about a bridge (that really would be boring), it's a book about the people and events in one of

… on a day when two young men were walking on the moon, a very old woman on Long Island would tell reporters that the public excitement over the feat was not so much compared to what she had seen “on the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge.” On the inside cover of my copy of this book its previous owner has inserted a little love note. The brief message is written in a very neat script, in red ink, apparently on the eve of a long separation. Now, you may think that a book about the Brooklyn B

I love David McCullough. I have yet to be disappointed by a book of his, and I have read most of them, and will read them all. “The Great Bridge” is no exception, but there were times when I had to push myself to read through (only a few times). This is not the fault of the author, but my own. As this book is about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge McCullough at times (appropriately) talks about engineering and other matters of science and my mind does not naturally attach itself to such thing...

McCullough has improved as a writer since this book came out in 1972, but he was writing well enough even back then to carry this reader through almost seven hundred pages in three days.One of the first grownup books I remember reading was a history of scams involving the sale of the Brooklyn Bridge. Now, finally, I've read about the construction of the thing, years after having lived in Manhattan and driven across it repeatedly and unappreciatively. Of course McCullough, a social historian, wri...

Now wouldn't you think that a book about the building of a bridge would be rather dry and uninteresting? Not if it is written by historian David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. An amazing amount of research has gone into this history of the Brooklyn Bridge.....from the dream of a father (John Roebling) to a reality by the son (Washington Roebling). We sometimes take for granted such icons as this bridge spanning the East River and never realize what it takes to make an idea a reali...

I apparently liked this book more than I originally thought I had (see below). There is an awful lot of detail in this book, maybe too much. I now know way more about caissons, the bends and different types of steel than I ever thought I would ever know or ever needed to know. I do understand why all the information was included, but it was a slog to get through it all. I also have a better understanding of the Tammany Hall scandal. The political scandals of that era were amazingly blatant. The

In all my years of biography reading, this was the first time an inanimate object, the Brooklyn Bridge, took centre stage. Under the guidance of McCullough, the story of the Bridge's conception and realisation emerged not only as an architectural feat, but as an exciting part of New York history. McCullough takes the reader through a historical adventure, similar to some of the other journeys he has undertaking in his biographical works, filling pages and chapters with the impact numerous charac...