-Essays in this collection cover European and American railway construction and strategy in Argentina, Canada, Central Africa, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand. Although the essays vary in quality, they pursue a similar theme, namely, that railroad mania spread outside Europe and the US after the mid-19th century and that these widely scattered ribbons of iron and steel created altered patterns of trade and power. "The locomotive clearly had a unique propensity for integrating and annexing territory, for monopolizing its resources, and for preempting the future of great stretches of country. All of these implications . . . gave rise to a distinctive type of railway imperialism, which added a new dimension to European expansion and projected it to a higher pitch of intensity over a vastly extended range." The volume is blessed with an exceptionally thoughtful concluding essay, "Railways and Informal Empire," which ties together effectively the individual pieces. Since no previous work explores the relationship between railways and imperialism, this title holds considerable value, most of all to economic, political, and social historians. It is well documented, contains helpful maps, and includes a usable selected bibliography. Upper-division undergraduates and above. —Choice