Rapid population growth in the Great Plains and the American West after the Civil War was the result not only of railroad expansion but of a collaboration among competing railroads to adopt a uniform width for track. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 shows how the consolidation of smaller railroads and the growth of capitalism worked to unify the fragmented railroad industry through standardization. George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu cover the emergence of railroads before and during the Civil War, their expansions westward, the gradual adoption of a national rail gauge, and the...