Booktv. Org. Doug most recounts the competition between boston and new york city, to build the nations first subway system during the late 19th century. This is a little under one hour. [applause] thank you. Thank you everyone for coming out on this lovely night. Ive done one of than earlier so far and the also was a slushy and lovely night. So maybe this is what you should expect Going Forward for things. It is also appropriate as i talk to people about this today, as i was thinking about this now, its appropriate that their snow around because as it turned out snow was a critical factor in the building of subways in this country. I will talk a little bit about that. Subways came to be in large part because of a storm much bigger than the one that we are experiencing today and a much more deadly one. I thought id do tonight is talked briefly about the question everyone has asked me, how did you come up with the idea for the book, a question that you often here. And i will talk a littl
A when i move to boston it was an experience. And as i started looking for a book idea i started looking at the boston subway knowing it was a point in america. One of the things that was interesting as we looked into the history of that and i discovered i had written a true story behind how the subway came to be. But then i was interested when i discovered the same time boston was debating and digging the subway new york was doing the exact same thing. At the same time in the late 1800s both cities were completely overrun by immigrants who had flooded into the city in the second half of the 19th century and really had sort of overrun the cities in the cities were at the time sort of just fingernails of what they are today. Everybody was crammed into just a tiny portion of the city because that was as thou art far out is you could go. If you wanted to get from Downtown Boston to brooklyn it would take you two hours by horse and carriage. Very few people lived out here except for the ex