Fourteen of Walker Evans's evocative photographs of Brooklyn Bridge,
most of which have never been published, appear in this edition of Alan
Trachenberg's Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol. In the new afterword
Trachenberg explores the history of Hart Crane's The Bridge,
especially the poem's integral relationship with the powerful
photography of Evans.
"[Brooklyn Bridge] is familiar in so many movies, in so many stage
sets and, as Mr. Trachtenberg shows in this brilliant . . . book, it is
at least as much a symbol as a reality. . . . Mr. Trachtenberg is always
exciting and illuminating."-Times Literary Supplement
"The book is a skillful and insightful synthesis of materials about
Brooklyn Bridge from such diverse fields as history, engineering,
literature and art. Essentially it asks the question of why Brooklyn
Bridge achieved such great impact on the nineteenth century American
imagination and why it has continued to have a significant impact on
twentieth century art and literature. In addition to its exploration of
the bridge's symbolic significance, which includes perceptive analyses
of such particular works as Hart Crane's great poem cycle and the
paintings of artists like Joseph Stella, the book also includes a
solidly researched account of the conception, planning and construction
of the bridge. Trachtenberg's account of the intellectual and cultural
sources of the bridge is particularly fascinating in its demonstration
of the convergence of many different philosophical and ideological
currents of the time around this great engineering enterprise,
illustrating as effectively as any discussion I know the complex
interplay of ideas and material culture."-John G. Cawelti, University of
Chicago
"Alan Trachtenberg's Brooklyn Bridge is a fascinating story, the
philosophic genesis of the idea in Europe, John Roebling's heroic effort
to translate it into masonry and steel, and the meanings that Americans
attached to the physical object as an emblem of their aspirations."-Leo
Marx, Amherst College, author of The Machine in the Garden
