The building of a nation -- Societal benefits -- Railroad tunnels -- Transit tunnels -- Highway tunnels -- Water tunnels -- Wastewater tunnels -- Innovations in tunneling -- The future of tunneling

The New York Times Bestseller! The story of an outcast boy, his eccentric dad, and the scary underground world they discover through secret TUNNELS.14-year-old Will Burrows has little in common with his strange, dysfunctional family. In fact, the only bond he shares with his eccentric father is a passion for archaeological excavation. So when Dad mysteriously vanishes, Will is compelled to dig up the truth behind his disappearance. He unearths the unbelievable: a secret subterranean society. "The Colony" has existed unchanged for a century, but it's no benign time capsule of a bygone era--because the Colony is ruled by a cultlike overclass, the Styx. Before long--before he can find his father--Will is their prisoner....

Derrick (archivist, Bronx County Historical Society) tells the story of what was, at the time, the largest and most expensive single municipal project ever attempted--the 1913 expansion of the New York City Dual System of Rapid Transit. He considers the factors motivating the expansion, the process of its design, the controversies surrounding financing it, and its impact on New York then and today. Appendixes summarize the contracts and related certificates and list the opening dates of Dual System lines. Twenty-four pages of photographs are also included. c. Book News Inc.

This book covers the fundamentals of tunneling machine technology: drilling, tunneling, waste removal and securing. It treats methods of rock classification for the machinery concerned as well as legal issues, using numerous example projects to reflect the state of technology, as well as problematic cases and solutions. The work is structured such that readers are led from the basics via the main functional elements of tunneling machinery to the different types of machine, together with their areas of application and equipment. The result is an overview of current developments. Close cooperation among the authors involved has created a book of equal interest to experienced tunnelers and newcomers.

A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall. In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, “A wall is better than a war,” and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “We don’t care about East Berlin.” JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions. As Greg Mitchell’s riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germany’s top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the “CBS tunnel”; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as U.S. networks prepared to “pay for play” but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive read whose themes still reverberate.

A history of the early subways.