GRENVILLE M. DODGE: Soldier, Politician, Railroad Pioneer

Dodge City--Cheyenne-Union Pacific. The names this staid biography conjures up were the playthings of this rough, hustling entrepeneur whom Teddy Roosevelt called ""a real American."" Dodge sensed that his destiny lay in the West and left his native New England after college to settle on the land he would one day line with the rails of our first major transcontinental network. The call of the dollar always echoed in his ear and after he had mastered the art of war, as a politically appointed Civil War general, he maneuvered and finagled, engineered and oversaw the first major railroad pointing west. Hirshson thinks that Dodge's history of million dollar deals, cheating Indians and forging the links which made our nation run parallel to that of the country as a whole. When we see the Negro-hating Dodge fighting for the Union and then asking Roosevelt to stand up against Jim Crow laws, the irony is complete and clear: the good professor is correct.... A sound biography, perhaps too academic for the general reader and, even with illustrations (not seen) and apparatus, priced beyond general collections.