I ended up being kind of disappointed in this book。 There were so many long side stories and tangents that I often lost track of the main story and why the individuals/places we were getting a side story on were important to the main storyline。 The two railroad men， Palmer and Strong， spent their time trying to outdo each other， and race for the best routes - often with extremes like building stone forts along the routes and hiring armed posses to keep the other side from working。 Their irration I ended up being kind of disappointed in this book。 There were so many long side stories and tangents that I often lost track of the main story and why the individuals/places we were getting a side story on were important to the main storyline。 The two railroad men， Palmer and Strong， spent their time trying to outdo each other， and race for the best routes - often with extremes like building stone forts along the routes and hiring armed posses to keep the other side from working。 Their irrational behavior is so identical there are times when it is easy to confuse the two railroads and Sedgwick regularly lets readers know he agrees the men are being identically ridiculous。 While bringing railroads west， through Colorado and eventually to California created fascinating changes to the country that I enjoyed reading about， overall I found this book too much of a slog to get through to really enthusiastically recommend to anyone。 I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review 。。。more