The Longest Line On The Map: The United States, The Pan-american Highway, And The Quest To Link The Americas

  • Author: Eric Rutkow
  • Narrator: Jacques Roy
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Duration: 14:39:45
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Synopsis

From the award-winning author of American Canopy, a dazzling account of the world’s longest road, the Pan-American Highway, and the epic quest to link North and South America, a dramatic story of commerce, technology, politics, and the divergent fates of the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Pan-American Highway, monument to a century’s worth of diplomacy and investment, education and engineering, scandal and sweat, is the longest road in the world, passable everywhere save the mythic Darien Gap that straddles Panama and Colombia. The highway’s history, however, has long remained a mystery, a story scattered among government archives, private papers, and fading memories. In contrast to the Panama Canal and its vast literature, the Pan-American Highway—the United States’ other great twentieth-century hemispheric infrastructure project—has become an orphan of the past, effectively erased from the story of the “American Century.”

The Longest Line on the Map uncovers this incredible tale for the first time and weaves it into a tapestry that fascinates, informs, and delights. Rutkow’s narrative forces the reader to take seriously the question: Why couldn’t the Americas have become a single region that “is” and not two near irreconcilable halves that “are”? Whether you’re fascinated by the history of the Americas, or you’ve dreamed of driving around the globe, or you simply love world records and the stories behind them, The Longest Line on the Map is a riveting narrative, a lost epic of hemispheric scale.

Chapters

  • 001 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Open

    Duration: 35s
  • 002 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Introduction

    Duration: 08min
  • 003 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part1 TheRail Chapter1A TheMagnificentConception

    Duration: 01h04min
  • 004 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part1 TheRail Chapter1B TheMagnificentConception

    Duration: 59min
  • 005 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part1 TheRail Chapter2A TheEagleAndTheOctopus

    Duration: 48min
  • 006 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part1 TheRail Chapter2B TheEagleAndTheOctopus

    Duration: 44min
  • 007 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part1 TheRail Chapter3A TheRouteOfVolcanoes

    Duration: 01h10min
  • 008 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part1 TheRail Chapter3B TheRouteOfVolcanoes

    Duration: 01h04min
  • 009 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Interlude Chapter4A OutOfTheMuck

    Duration: 01h08min
  • 010 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Interlude Chapter4B OutOfTheMuck

    Duration: 01h10min
  • 011 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Chapter5A GoodRoadsMakeGoodNeighbors

    Duration: 58min
  • 012 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Chapter5B GoodRoadsMakeGoodNeighbors

    Duration: 56min
  • 013 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Chapter6 TheFarWesternFront

    Duration: 01h21min
  • 014 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Chapter7 FreedomRoad

    Duration: 01h14min
  • 015 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Chapter8A TheMissingLink

    Duration: 48min
  • 016 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Chapter8B TheMissingLink

    Duration: 55min
  • 017 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Part2 TheRoad Conclusion

    Duration: 02min
  • 018 TheLongestLineOnTheMap Out

    Duration: 38s