It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge

I'm constantly awed by David McCullough's accomplishments: How does he find the time to do such thorough research on such a wide array of topics? His books are engrossing, detailed, and never dry, and I always learn so much.

For instance, I go running across "The Great Bridge" two or three times a week from April through October. Yet until I read this book, I had no idea of the political negotiations required to get the construction approved, including a cameo appearance by Boss Tweed. (New York City, big money, late 1800s -- I should've expected that!)

Similarly, I vaguely knew that building the bridge required risky innovations like the giant caissons that lowered workers into the river, and that many workers died in the process. But McCullough's vivid descriptions made it real: the overpowering floods, the fires, the hellish heat, the pressure, the physical strain, the inch-by-inch exactitude.

My only complaint is that this is about 200 pages more than I really wanted to know. (I need to learn how to skim.)

I love the Brooklyn Bridge. I love the American gothic look of it, the practicality of its all-purpose use design. I walk across the Brooklyn Bridge every time I'm in NYC, and I finally got around to reading this book so I'd know something more than what is on the bronze plaques at each end.

David McCullough's special gift is the ability to pick fascinating people to tell his stories. Here it's the bridge's chief engineer Washington Roebling and his wife Emily Warren Roebling, intelligent, literate, amusing and prolific correspondents who live the story of the construction of what was once justifiably called the eighth wonder of the world. You won't believe the corruption of the board of trustees--at one time there were four different candidates for NY governor on it--who did their worst to turn the bridge into a political football. But in the end, the bridge is completed, a triumph of imagination and engineering over crooked politicians and massive kickbacks and manufacturing fraud and Roebling's physical collapse from the newly named caisson disease, nowadays called the bends.

The Great Bridge is a readable and enlightening picture of an era where the driving zeitgeist was to conquer nature and put it to work for mankind. There are wonderful little nuggets of other people doing extraordinary things, too, like Alfred E. Beach building an underground pneumatic train in secret so Boss Tweed, who had been bought and paid for by elevated train interests, wouldn't find out about it. Beach's brother Moses was one of Mark Twain's traveling companions during the trip that inspired The Innocents Abroad. No kidding, everybody you ever heard of in Victorian America is in this book, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Alexander Grahm Bell, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry Ward Beecher, you name it, they're here.

Audible credit 27 hours 24 min. Narrated by Nelson Runger (A+)

My vision is getting worse; hopefully new lenses will help. Until then I will point readers to a Goodreads review written by Matt on August 18, 1915. He expresses better than I could, my admiration for McCullough's biography of a bridge.

Loved this. The Eighth Wonder of the World—designed by an immigrant, built largely by immigrant workers. Corruption, greed, political intrigue. A truly American story.

Let's just say you'll have to SUSPEND belief that this epic American landmark was ever built.

I apparently liked this book more than I originally thought I had (see below). There is an awful lot of detail in this book, maybe too much. I now know way more about caissons, the bends and different types of steel than I ever thought I would ever know or ever needed to know. I do understand why all the information was included, but it was a slog to get through it all. I also have a better understanding of the Tammany Hall scandal. The political scandals of that era were amazingly blatant.
The book is filled with so many interesting people, especially Washington Roebling and his wife Emily. He sacrificed his health and nearly his life to build that bridge, and she became his eyes, ears and legs when he became incapacitated. The level of engineering that went into building the Brooklyn Bridge is just extraordinary, given the time. It stands as a monument to the people who believed in it and built it.
I usually enjoy David McCullough's books a bit more than this one, but I felt it got bogged down in the engineering aspects of the subject matter. When he was writing about the people and the times, the book was much better. Either way, I know I'll never regard the Brooklyn Bridge the same way again. I absolutely have a new found respect for it. Last night I was watching Law and Order SVU and there it was in the opening credits. It brought a big smile to my face. I honestly had never noticed it before. Now I can't not notice it. Good job, David McCullough!

10/15/17: I just raised my rating to 4 stars. I realized that after all this time, I just can't get this book out of my mind, so it must have made a bigger impression on me than I had imagined at the time of writing my initial thoughts of the book. When we were in NYC this summer, one of my goals was to see the bridge in person, and we did. I am now obsessed with the Brooklyn Bridge. Well played, David McCullough!

This is nonfiction history about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the people who made it happen. This is the third book by this author that I've read. I've had this book for quite some time and I'm glad I finally had a chance to fit this one into a reading challenge.

This one had it's ups and downs. The best part was that I found answers to questions I've always had about how bridges are built when they are over large bodies of water. I liked the facts and research in this book, but there were way too many tangents for my liking. So 3 stars.

3.5 Stars
Ordinarily I would not read a book about a bridge. But this book was written by David McCullough (as were 5 others I’ve read) & therein lies the difference. While there is enough technical info to excite those of an engineering bent, McCullough doesn’t suffocate the reader with it. Rather, he uses it as the core for such a colorful portrait of personalities, politics, corruption, courage, and inventive daring that his narrative almost seems like a dramatic novel.
“The very shabbiness and stunted scale of the old neighborhood beneath the tower worked to the advantage of the bridge, which by contrast seemed an embodiment of the noblest aspirations, majestic, heaven-directed, lifting into the light above the racket, the shabbiness, and the confusion of the waterfront, the way a great cathedral rises over the hovels of the faithful.”

If I had to to pick my favorite five books, The Great Bridge would make the cut. It is an amazing history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as the history of New York City in the the late 1800s. The research that must have gone into this incredibly detailed history, makes for a great read.

(I might be a little prejudiced, having grown up in NYC and having a career as a project engineer.)

The engineering feats that were developed to build the bridge are hard to imagine. This was before computers, and even before the calculator. The techniques that made building the bridge are that much more fascinating. In an era when many bridges failed, the iconic Brooklyn Bridge is over a century old and still in use to this day. The background, being the history of NYC itself, corruption and all.

The book is so well written that I felt as if I lived through it. Like I said it is one of my favorite books, and I can’t imagine it ever being knocked pff my top five.

McCullough is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine! His books are large, but still captivating as you become immersed in the time period, events of the age, and the people who accomplished the seemingly impossible.

I cop to being a McCullough fan-boy so I admit to lacking some objectivity. He is the only author I've ever read that would make me care about a bridge that I've never seen in a state I've only been in twice. The author does a great job winding the two threads of the bridge construction with the political/personal conflict that took place behind the scenes. It is the truest sort of drama and reminds us that no great thing is accomplished without someone suffering.