That's how I learned about "Building Big Iron: The Epic History of Locomotive Building in the United States from 1830 to the Present" by Bill Yenne.

I read a couple of reviews and some sample pages on the Amazon website. I bought the book for my Kindle.

I thought I knew something about early steam locomotive building. Wrong! There were many builders and a short history of the less important ones and a long history of the important ones was researched and presented. I didn't understand how Alco was formed by a merger of several smaller companies, for example, or how Baldwin built up from scratch starting small in Philadelphia.

Yenne also presents the transition to diesel explaining why so few steam-engine builders made the transition, why others failed, and why a new firm, EMC/EMD, was the run away early winner.

I found the book extremely interesting, filling many gaps in my knowledge. I recommend it if you are even slightly interested in this stuff.

Marty -

As long as we are on the subject of recommending books, thought I might mention one I just finished reading. It's "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" by William Rosen, and is described as "A story of steam, industry and invention". It starts out at "The Rocket" and then describes how we ended up there.

Les

Another book you won't want to miss if you like this kind of stuff (I do).
A History of the American Locomotive, Its Development: 1830-1880
By John H. White, Jr.

Steve

People Who Bought This Book. What bookend by whom? I didn't see any book mentioned in the beginning of this post.

Mr. Starr

Generic reference to Amazon's marketing feature.