This book is concerned with the development of the railroad network prior to the Civil War. Zachary Callen focuses on why the railroad network did not evolve into a “spiderweb” that covered more of the land area of the United States. In addition, during the period covered by Callen, primarily 1830–1850, states did not necessarily cooperate in developing regional rail networks with a common track gauge.

Callen also makes an important contribution by comparing the early development of American railroads with France and England. This is a very interesting set of comparisons, albeit limited by the size difference between the US and the European cases, which Callen discusses.

One weakness of the book is Callen's failure to consider the early development of the Trunk Line railroads during this period. Namely, by 1851–52 the Erie Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the B&O reached Dunkirk, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, and Wheeling, VA, respectively. And by the mid-1850s, all had reached either or both Chicago and the Mississippi River. These railroads had to have corporate charters from each state that they operated in and the same gauge was used within each railroad so that they were end-to-end systems. Also these railroads were not fully private. Each had to have the power of eminent domain, which is a power reserved to the sovereign. This, plus the fact that the states granted corporate charters, made the railroads a mixed public-private enterprise from the very beginning.

With respect to the point Callen makes about the spiderweb, he could have backed his argument up with the work of Robert William Fogel's 1964 masterpiece Railroads and American Economic Growth (which was cited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in their awarding Fogel the Nobel Prize in 1993). Fogel's counterfactual argument about canals and rivers would have been a nice way of arguing the point that owing to its federal structure, the United States failed to coordinate a better railroad network.

Another weakness of the book is Callen's discussion of the Illinois Central Land Grant. The seminal work on this is Paul W. Gates's 1934 book The Illinois Central Railroad and Its Colonization Work. But it is true that Douglas had a personal interest in getting his home city of Galena connected to the Mississippi River and also to Chicago (which would become the largest railroad center in the United States by 1856). Douglas also had political motives in forming his coalition with Southerners to add on the land grant sought by Mobile, AL, business interests who wanted to divert freight traffic away from New Orleans. This Northern and Southern Democrat coalition was later important to Douglas in his attempts to hold the Democratic Party together and his failed efforts to secure the nomination of a united Democratic Party in 1860.

Overall, this is a well-done book with sophisticated econometrics. And it certainly should be read by scholars interested in the political economics of railroad history. The weakness of the book is Callen's failure to include many important works of economic historians in his analysis.