Penn Press Podcasts

Albert J. Churella, Associate Professor in the Social and International Studies Department at Southern Polytechnic State University and author of The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846-1917, talks about his monumental history of the transportation giant. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. Churella discusses the birth of this enterprise and its relationship to America's natural, technological, and political landscape.