BOOKS
New York's Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit
In the nineteenth century, Manhattan’s streets were so choked with pedestrians, horses, vehicles, and vendors that a trip from City Hall to Central Park could take hours. Alfred Beach had the perfect solution: build a giant pneumatic tube underneath Broadway from the Battery to Harlem. Air pressure would shoot passengers up and down the island in clean, quiet carriages. But Beach was up against the operators of the horse-drawn streetcars and the politicians in their pay, most conspicuously William M. Tweed, the notorious “Boss” of Tammany Hall.
New York’s Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit tells a classic story of good versus evil, pitting the mild-mannered Beach, a visionary inventor and entrepreneur, against the oafish tyrant Tweed, the exemplar of corruption in the Gilded Age. It also tells the story of one of the most astonishing feats of engineering in American history, the surreptitious creation of the nation’s first operational subway.
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When Harry Met Pablo: Truman, Picasso, and the Cold War Politics of Modern Art
Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles—"The Steagles"—Saved Pro Football...
Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America's
Favorite Spectator Sport
BIO
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Matthew Algeo writes about interesting stuff.
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Or, as his mom liked to say, Matthew is an award-winning journalist and author.
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His latest book is New York's Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit.
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He is the author of seven other books, including Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip, which was named one of the best books of 2009 by the Washington Post.
In addition to reporting and writing, Matthew has held jobs as a convenience store clerk, a gas station attendant, a Halloween costume salesman, and a proofreader. He also worked in a traveling circus (as a hot dog vendor; no acrobatics involved).
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Matthew holds a degree in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania.
His wife, Allyson, is a United States Foreign Service officer. They have lived in Bamako, Rome, Ulan Bator, Maputo, and Sarajevo. They currently live in Botswana with their twelve-year-old daughter Zaya.
