A detailed account of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge providing background on its engineering history as well as the political and social climate of the late-nineteenth century.

2006-12-20 The pain that created the bridge.

Double Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough ("Truman" and "John Adams") skillfully reveals the pain, hardship, skulduggery, danger and raw doggedness that combined to create the Brooklyn Bridge - against all odds, obstructiveness and physical barriers.

The reader is entertained with not only a real insight into the lives of the Roebling Family - father and son who designed the bridge and oversaw its construction - but also with the insufferable working conditions, the nefarious behaviour of politicians and the chance to savour at close hand the atmosphere of the second half of the nineteenth century in Brooklyn and New York.