The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway - Hardcover

Hart, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1595580980 ISBN 13: 9781595580986

Publisher: New Press, The, 2007

Synopsis

In the tradition of Robert Caro's The Power Broker, a sweeping, investigative history of the building of the road connecting Manhattan to the rest of the country.

At the dawn of America's love affair with the automobile, cars and trucks leaving the nation's largest city were unceremoniously dumped out of the western end of the Holland Tunnel onto local roads wending their way through the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Jersey City mayor Frank Hague—dictator of the Hudson County political machine and a national political player—was a prime mover behind the building of the country's first "superhighway," designed to connect the hub of New York City to the United States of America. Hague's nemesis in this undertaking was union boss Teddy Brandle, and construction of the last three miles of Route 25, later dubbed the Pulaski Skyway, marked an epic battle between big labor and big politics, culminating in a murder and the creation of a motorway so flawed it soon became known as "Death Avenue" —now appropriately featured in the opening sequence of the hit HBO series The Sopranos.

A book in the tradition of Robert Caro's The Power Broker and Henry Petroski's Engineers of Dreams, The Last Three Miles brings to vivid life the riveting and bloodstained back story of a fascinating chapter in the heroic age of public works.

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Hart is an award-winning journalist who has written for the New York Times, Salon, and the Home News Tribune in New Jersey's Middlesex and Union counties (where Robert Caro worked), among other publications. He lives in New Jersey.

Review:

[A] first-rate piece of narrative history . . . splendidly written, with nary a wasted word. His account of a massive construction project and its travails, framed by the tale of one of its major players, Frank Hague, revives the story of New Jersey's original "boss" for a new generation. -- Joseph G. Bilby, H-Net

Great real characters -- Hudson County deity Frank Hague and even Longy Zwillman of Newark (last seen in Philip Roth's The Plot Against America), Teddy Brandle and even A. Harry Moore -- fill its pages. - Maureen Berzok, The Star-Ledger

Tells a story as harrowingly as Hitchcock, as dramatically as Welles. - The Record

A fascinating read. - Mario Murillo, host of WBAI's Wake Up Call

A Lapham's Quarterly Recommended Book. Featured in news coverage by The New York Times and The Star-Ledger.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Press, The
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1595580980
• ISBN 13: 9781595580986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216