"In joining the author on his 2008 rail travels around the country—that is, where passenger rail still survives—readers get a fine, accessible history of American passenger and freight rail service; a travel memoir with authentically rendered portraits; and a prescription for the future of American railroads. With the country seemingly poised on the threshold of major new commitments to a mythic component of our continental history, this is crucial reading."
See all the best book selections here or read Library Journal's original review of "Waiting on a Train" here.
McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails across much of the Amtrak system. Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible?
Organized around these rail journeys, "Waiting on a Train" is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism. "Waiting on a Train" is now available on Amazon.com.
This book is one small step toward the giant leap of consciousness necessary to repair our battered country.
— James Howard Kunstler, author of World Made By Hand and the Long Emergency
Readers of travel memoir, of investigative reporting, those seeking to understand America today, even devotees of fiction of the American journey — heck, simply of fine writing! — look out for James McCommon's "Waiting on a Train." McCommons interweaves stories of the men and women he encounters with an accessible and expertly traced history of America's enchantment and subsequent tragically wrongheaded abandonment of its railroads. The son and grandson of railroad men, McCommons does them proud. Detain his work.
— Margaret Heilbrun, from the Library Journal, Sept. 1, 2009