{"product_id":"9781595587480","title":"The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn investigative history of Depression Era power brokers and labor wars in the construction of the Pulaski Skyway across the New Jersey Meadowlands.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In the 1930s, as America’s love affair with the automobile began, cars and trucks leaving the nation’s largest city were dumped out of the Holland Tunnel onto local roads winding through New Jersey swampland. The Pulaski Skyway, America’s first “superhighway,” would change all that by connecting the hub of New York City to the rest of the country. But the corrupt and violent path to its completion would change much more for Jersey City’s residents and labor unions.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Jersey City mayor Frank Hague—dictator of the Hudson County political machine and a national political player—was a prime mover behind the ambitious transit project. Hague’s nemesis in this undertaking was union boss Teddy Brandle. Construction of the last three miles of the Pulaski Skyway, then simply known as Route 25, marked an epic battle between big labor and big politics, culminating in a murder and the creation of a motorway so flawed it soon became known as “Death Avenue”—appropriately featured in the opening sequence of HBO’s hit series \u003ci\u003eThe Sopranos\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A book in the tradition of Robert Caro’s \u003ci\u003eThe Power Broker\u003c\/i\u003e and Henry Petroski’s \u003ci\u003eEngineers of Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Last Three Miles\u003c\/i\u003e brings to vivid life a riveting and bloodstained chapter in the heroic age of public works.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A revealing look into how local politics can affect the design and construction of our national infrastructure, sometimes with disastrous results. Hart uses his considerable narrative talent to tell an engaging human story about what might seem otherwise to be but an enormous black steel structure.” —Henry Petroski, author of \u003ci\u003eEngineers of Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSuccess Through Failure\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"New Press, The","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47151225897200,"sku":"9781595587480","price":14.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781595587480_p0.jpg?v=1769901412","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781595587480","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}