مترو أنفاق نيويورك السري: عبقرية ألفريد بيتش تحت الأرض وأصول النقل

In the 19th century, the streets of Manhattan were so crowded with pedestrians, horses, vehicles, and vendors that a trip from City Hall to Central Park took hours. Alfred Beach had the perfect solution: build a giant wind tunnel under Broadway that ran from the Battery to Harlem. The air pressure was such that passengers were transported up and down the island in clean, quiet carriages. But Beach faced opposition from horse-drawn streetcar operators and paid politicians, most notably William M. Tweed, the notorious leader of Tammany Hall. New York's Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit tells a classic story of the struggle between good and evil, contrasting the quiet Beach, a visionary inventor and entrepreneur, with the tyrannical, foolish Tweed, a symbol of corruption in the Gilded Age. The book also tells the story of one of the most remarkable engineering feats in American history: the secret construction of the nation's first working subway. New York seemed poised to become the second city in the world to have a fully-fledged subway system, after London. Unfortunately, political inaction and greed combined to deprive the city of the subway for another thirty years. However, Alfred Beach conclusively proved the feasibility of underground railroads in Manhattan, and paved the way for modern mass transit systems. Richly illustrated and filled with distinctive characters, New York's Secret Underground will captivate readers and provide historical context for current conflicts between public interests and powerful business and political groups. Algeo tells this incredible true story in full for the first time, and although it took place more than a century ago, it will feel surprisingly familiar at times.