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Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930

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From: Environmental History
Date: 20060701
Author:Pearson, Byron E

Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930. By Richard Orsi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xxii + 615 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, index. $29-95.

Railroad histories are typically written from a negative perspective. The Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) has been described as a corporate hydra since novelist Frank Norris used the metaphor of an "Octopus" (p.46) to depict it over a century ago. Richard Orsi, in Sunset Limited, writes a balanced account of the SP and its leaders, and in so doing provides historians with a ...

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