Bridges and Men
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From the first vines thrown across small streams to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge across the entrance to New York Harbor and to plans for possible bridges across the English Channel and the Straits of Messina, Mr. Gies interests us in the men who dreamed bridges and built them; in the terrible catastrophes of bridges that collapsed—including that across the First of Tay and “Galloping Gertie” across the Tacoma Narrows; in painters and poets and novelists who have found their inspiration in or on bridges.
In large part, that is, BRIDGES AND MEN is about practical visionaries who combined the genius of engineers and architects, the talents of propagandists and business men: The Bridge Brothers, who built the world-faced Pont d’Avignon; Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, who built the Pont de la Concorde; john Rennie, the Scottish farmer boy who built New London Bridge; George and Robert Stephenson, who invented the railroad and railroad bridge; and Thomas Telford, who bridged the ocean at Menai Strait.
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Joseph Gies (October 8, 1916 - April 13, 2006) was an American historian and writer. Together with his wife, Frances Gies (1915-2013), a fellow historian, he collaborated on a number of books about the Middle Ages. He also wrote many individual works, including They Never Had It So Good (1949); Adventure Underground: The Story of the World’s Great Tunnels (1962); The “Flying Arch”: Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1963); Wonders of the Modern World (1966); and Harry S. Truman: A Pictorial Biography (1968). He wrote articles for national magazines and was an editor of this Week Magazine, the Sunday newspaper supplement. Joseph Gies graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939 and lived with his wife and children in Wilton, Connecticut. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 89.
