Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

Gordon Chang, a history professor at Stanford and co-director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North American Project, wrote the remarkable book Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad which was published in 2019. This is a scholarly work about the history of the Chinese immigrants who built one half of the transcontinental railroad in America. Based on government documents, business and payroll records, folk songs, oral histories, and other works that were relevant, the author reveals many details on how those Chinese immigrants worked, performed dangerous construction (e.g. such as tunneling through the Sierra Nevada Mountains), and built a historical account of Chinese immigrants in America and their interplay with white employers and other workers/segments of the population. In the author’s narrative, some interesting information is provided in the story-telling method, including Chinese workers' traditions and daily lives. Overall, this book is an impressive and incredible work resulting from cumulative and interdisciplinary research that speaks for a forgotten and dismissed segment in American history. Andrew Graybill’s book review published on the New York Times (May 10, 2019) states that Chang’s book is a moving effort to recover stories of the “Railroad Chinese” and honor their indispensable contribution to the building of modern America. On the Wall Street Journal (May 9, 2019), Peter Cozzens wrote that Chang “has written a remarkably rich, human, and compelling story of the railroad Chinese.” This book has won the 2020 CALA Best Book Award (Categroy: Non-fiction).

Chang, Gordon

Mariner Books

2019

eng

text; book

9781328618573