The Transcontinental Railroad was a project that begin in 1863 to build a railway that connected the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast. The goal of this massive project was to provide a way to continue (and increase) trade, commerce, and travel. In addition to that, many new towns sprang up near these train depots and refueling stations. A great deal of what is considered America's Heartland was previously undeveloped, aside from Indigenous populations, and this access and cheap travel fare provided a boom in Westward Expansion. The project was complete by 1869.

The main focus of this book was on the men who worked on this massive project. The Central Pacific Railroad began a recruitment campaign to bring in Cantonese workers from China. Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 Chinese workers were on this project. Xenophobia was absolutely a thing, and these workers often faced all types of racism, violence, and exclusion from the whole of society. While the railroad company considered the Chinese to be a great resource for cheap labor, the government put immigration restrictions in place to prevent too many Chinese from immigrating. In addition to that, the companies used their ridiculous racism to pay miniscule wages to Chinese workers, in comparison to any White workers they had. (Which I find exceptionally distasteful in many ways for many reasons.) The workers worked six days a week, pretty much around the clock in shifts, in brutal weather conditions. Most of the work was manual labor, so strenuous indeed. White workers were also housed in sleeper train cars, while Chinese workers were regulated to tents. Really, the entire thing was nonsense. Somewhere around 1,200 Chinese men died while working on this project. In contrast, the Union Pacific Railroad hired veterans who had experience with railroads during the Civil War, as well as Irish immigrants. Irish immigrants were also treated differently than their White counterparts, however they were treated considerably better than the Chinese workers on the other end of the line. Irish workers were less tolerant of discrimination and poor management from the railroad companies, causing many to quit the job.

I think that it is an absolute shame that the history of Chinese immigrants is not taught in school. Perhaps it is in some places or in other schools, but it certainly was not here. I have to admit I did not receive the best education in grades K-12, and a lot of what I eventually learned/learned the facts about happened in college. I never even learned about this in college, and I never did understand why sometimes racism was mentioned in regards to Chinese people. People have adopted children from China for a long time, and I thought it was really stupid to desire these Chinese babies because they were cute and apparently very intelligent, but then turn around and be racist and ugly to that entire group of people. I was aware of the Japanese internment camps during World War II, but not about the heavy discrimination that Chinese faced.

This book was a pretty lengthy read. I cannot say that I was very interested in learning about the Transcontinental Railroad when I bought this book, but it was very cheap at the used book store and I really like this author. His work is always very detailed and well researched, and the information is told in a way that keeps my attention and my desire to finish it in place. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn about the history of the Chinese in the United States, because it has a lot of valuable information in it. Infuriating, but valuable. I really learned so much from this book.