April 3, 2017
Wagner (Ariel’s Gift), former literary editor at the Times of London, celebrates the stunning achievement of Washington Roebling, an unlikely giant of the industrial revolution, in this engrossing biography. Roebling oversaw construction of the iconic New York bridge in the 1870s and 1880s, a feat that pioneered new building methods and materials but broke his health (he got the bends from high air pressure in the underwater caissons where workers excavated the foundations). Wagner writes detailed, lucid descriptions of the technological advances that made the bridge possible, and the bewilderingly complex planning and calculations Roebling undertook to combine them into a feasible structure. Roebling had a conflicted relationship with his father, John, a brilliant engineer and inventor of the wire rope that made large suspension bridges possible; John initiated the bridge project but died before construction began. The two could be Eugene O’Neill characters: the father a tyrant who built a business empire but tormented his family with violence, quack medical regimens, and bizarre diets; the son a low-key ironist always in his father’s shadow but possessed of a meticulous intellect and dogged tenacity. Wagner grounds her fine study of the human side of industrial progress in patient devotion to science and craft. Photos. Agent: Antony Harwood, Antony Harwood Literary (U.K.).
May 1, 2017
A biography of the man who helped design and build one of the most iconic bridges in America.John Roebling planned much of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, but he died in 1869, just before scheduled construction. The project fell to his son, Washington (1837-1926), and it took 14 years. New Statesman contributing writer Wagner (Seizure, 2007, etc.) chronicles the story of a father's influence on the son and the son's influence on his own family. There are plenty of texts about the Roeblings and their bridge--notably, David McCullough's The Great Bridge (1972)--but this portrait has the advantage of Washington's recently recovered memoir of life with his father. With contemporary notes, clippings, and letters, too, it makes a fascinating tale. John, who came to America to establish a village and then a wire mill, was extremely strict, and he was cheap. He was certain that copious water would cure every illness, and he was a devout spiritualist. A Rensselaer engineer, Washington was at Gettysburg, the Battle of the Crater, and the Wilderness. He was discharged as a colonel, a title he kept ever after. Washington's marriage was legendary. When he became incapacitated with the bends while working on the bridge, his wife, Emily, acted as his amanuensis, relaying his detailed instructions to workers on the site. Wagner recounts the festivities in Manhattan and Brooklyn when the bridge opened in 1883, but she fails to mention the widely reported panic, barely a week later, when the general public was invited to walk the span without the set fee of a penny. Many died or were injured by the crush. Washington's fortune grew with the Roebling wire mill, which supplied the Wright brothers and Charles Lindbergh with wire for their aircraft and thousands of miles of cable wire for the George Washington Bridge. Washington remarried after Emily's death and grew to be a hypochondriac, stingy old man, and he died in the summer of 1926, just short of his 90th birthday. A sturdy, illuminating biography.
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May 15, 2017
Fate, namely, the death of his father in an 1869 accident, made Washington Roebling (18371926) construction engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge, and he proved to be courageous and capable, as David McCullough wrote in The Great Bridge (1972). That title remains unsurpassed, but it is not a biography. Moreover, Wagner makes insightful use of a document that has since come to light, Roebling's unpublished memoir, as well as Roebling family archives. Roebling was the eldest son of a German immigrant who made a fortune manufacturing wirenot that his offspring saw the money. Not only was John Roebling miserly, he also governed his family with vituperation and violence, such that Washington developed into a taciturn, stoical character, traits reinforced by his experiences as a Union officer during the Civil War. He became a recluse during the building of the bridge but had a reliable assistanthis wife, Emilymonitor its progress. She impresses Wagner as an unusually assertive woman for the age, and he writes sensitively of the solaces and strains of her marriage. In all, a well-judged and well-written portrait.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)