The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry that built America’s First Subway tells the story of the people who had a hand in designing, funding, trying to stop, and building the first successful subway system in America. Tales of previous subway disasters, elevated train tracks freezing, cable cars derailing, horses dying in the streets, and explosions litter the story of people from all over the world working to make travel safer and faster.

Two of the biggest influencers of the subway system were two brothers: Henry Melville Whitney from Boston and William Collins Whitney from New York. Both Henry and William were very competitive and wealthy industrialists who each had a vested interest in wanting their separate cities to come out on top of this development-heavy race. The author, Doug Most, describes the tension between the brothers, the many immigrants who worked underground for days on end, the political kingpins with a desire to control the money coming from this new endeavor, and the competition between the inventors who wanted their names attached to this historic achievement.

Join Most as he discovers how the rapid influx of immigrants into Boston and New York, combined with the perils of steam railways and economic upheaval, paved the way for contractors to blast their way through busy downtown thoroughfares both above and below ground at all times day and night.