Boomer Railroad Memoirs (Signed Copy)

Niemann, Linda; Linda Niemann

ISBN 10: 0520068440 / ISBN 13: 9780520068445

Published by University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990

About this Item

Blue-boards hardback with a dust jacket now protected in a new archival-quality, removable Mylar plastic cover. Signed on the front free page with absolutely no further inscription, by the author. This copy has a "read-only-once" look & feel. Stored in sealed plastic protection and mailed (bubble-wrapped) in a sturdy Jiffy Rigi Bag envelope. We ship daily from Roswell, Ga. Serving satisfied customers since 1999. 252-stated pages.

Seller Inventory # 22015745

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Boomer Railroad Memoirs (Signed Copy)
• Publisher: University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520068440
• ISBN 13: 9780520068445
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Later Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Memoir
  • Women's Studies

About this title

Synopsis

The first woman to go railroading on the Southern Pacific recounts her journey--the people who work on the trains, the craft of the railroader, the Western landscape that inspired her--providing an elegy to a dying trade

Reviews

This volume is an odd amalgam of memoir, job manual and social study, as ex-druggie, ex-alcoholic, bisexual English Ph.D. Niemann reflects on her decade as a boomer--a railroad brakeman for the Southern Pacific line--from the tedious details of her daily labors to thoughts on the spirit of the American West. In her job, the author encountered many "characters," from Wrong Way, with whom she had a brief affair, to a frightening survivalist against whom she never won an argument. The author's portraits seem true to life, though Niemann terms some fictitious, and include insightful glimpses into personal history and a startling view of Utah society, as well as bland, easily forgettable passages.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This recollection of the author's ten years as a migratory brakeman for the railroad (a "boomer" who follows seasonal cycles of rush and recession around the country) can be appreciated on several levels. Certainly it is a remarkable adventure tale, the occupational odyssey of the Ph.D. in literature who immerses herself in blue-collar America. The book also reveals much about the state of the nation's railroads in the post-Reagan era: the hazards of the work, the safety violations, the compromises of the unions, the harrassment of women and minorities, the transient and often self-destructive lifestyles. At the same time, the author confronts herself, exploring her alcoholism and substance abuse; her difficulties with friends and lovers of both sexes; what it was in the life that attracted her in the first place; and more. The book does not conclude so much as stop, a chapter in an unfinished life. Highly recommended.
- Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.