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The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge | 
 enlarge | Author: Gay Talese
Creator: Bruce Davidson
Publisher: Walker & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $4.23
You Save: $9.77 (70%)
New (16) Collectible (2) from $4.23
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 495761
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0802776442
Dewey Decimal Number: 624.5097472
EAN: 9780802776440
ASIN: 0802776442
Publication Date: January 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Paperback, Book in Excellent Condition
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Product Description
With a new preface and afterword by the author and drawings by Lili Rethi.
Towards the end of 1964, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge—linking the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island with New Jersey—was completed. It remains an engineering marvel almost forty years later—at 13,700 feet (more than two and a half miles), it is still the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the sixth longest in the world. Gay Talese, then early in his career at the New York Times, closely followed the construction, and soon after the opening his book The Bridge appeared. Never before in paperback, it remains both a riveting human drama of politics and courage, and a demonstration of Talese’s consummate skills as a reporter and storyteller. His memorable narrative—accompanied, as then, by the astonishingly beautiful working drawings of Lili Rethi—will now captivate a new generation of readers.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 The Bridge February 8, 2008
This story as told By Gay Talese is riveting from beginning to end. It is a great tribute to the Men who built the Varrazano Narrows Bridge.New Jersey residents can also be proud because the Brooklyn Tower was built right down here in South Plainfield At Harris Structural Steel and delivered by barge in sections to the brooklyn anchorage. I do feel sorry for those displaced by the building of the bridge but i suppose this was the price that we had to pay for progress. Progress never comes without pain and sacrifice. I would reccommend this book to everyone and especially those of us in the engineering field and those historians out there that want a wide variety of perspectives. I will never be the same after reading this book,nor will my view of the Varrazano Narrows bridge ever look the same.Somehow it will have more grandier,gallantry and hope for the future!
Thomas R
www.myspace.com/thomasmezzo professional composer
The Bridge by Talese May 12, 2007
Outstandiing semi-hard to find book. Talese does a wonderful job of bringing to life the world of ironwork "Boomers" who built the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I recommend it to all who would like to learn more about the men (few women) who build our towers of capitalism and the country's infrastructure.
 A little gem . . . April 24, 2007
Let us praise the working-class heroes who risked their lives on this mammoth, formidable feat of engineering. A beautiful read.
 The Bridge - severing connections with the working class March 5, 2007
I confess to having enjoyed this book, but correctives are absolutely necessary....
In his Pulitzer prize winning "The Power Broker," Robert Caro (1974) inferred that mover/shaker Robert Moses needlessly destroyed homes to build highways. With all but the rich and powerful, Moses was able to easily bulldoze opposing positions and properties. Simultaneously, metropolitan NYC's mass transit infrastructure was seriously neglected.
Suggesting that he saw them as monuments to himself, Caro also maintained that Moses coveted bridges, while detesting tunnels. He detailed how Moses was able to politically sabotage the car/train tunnel between Brooklyn and Staten Island, which had been started before World War II.
Recalling the already existing Third Avenue route of the Gowanus Expressway, crossing the Narrows through railroad yards at 62nd Street (en route to similar railroad yards in St. George) would seem to have been far more logical route than cutting a swathe through Bay Ridge, en route to Fort Hamilton. While eliminating the need to destroy homes, however, the resultant bridge would have been in a far less dramatic spot, than the entrance to NY Harbor.
Gay Talese appears to share Moses' insensitivity toward working class victims. Looking back in the mid 1960s, he noted that although "the eight hundred buildings that stood in the path of the bridge's approachways had now all disappeared, many people had long memories and they still hated the bridge. Monsignor Edward J. Sweeney, whose parish at St. Ephrem's had lost two thousand of its twelve thousand parishioners, thus diminishing the Sunday collection considerably, still became enraged at the mere mention of the bridge" (p. 116). My aunt, uncle & cousins constituted 8 of Msgr. Sweeney's 2000 displaced parishioners. In that era, 2000 displaced parishioners meant 250 displaced single income families. With a free parish school that was still unable to accommodate all its children, Msgr. Sweeney's advocacy for his parishioners was absolutely not based on financial self-interest.
While Moses may have bulldozed opposition and homes, Talese's specialty seems to be bulldozing reputations.
In the interest of disclosure, I was one of the altar boys at Msgr. Sweeney's funeral, somewhere around 1970.
The Best of New Journalism December 2, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There are more famous titles linked to the New Journalism genre, but none better than this captures the craft. Each page encapsulates days of reporting and note taking. You'll get caught up in the story because the characters are so compelling, but never forget to remind yourself that every detail on every page is true.
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