Built to join the rapidly expanding cities of New York and Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Bridge was thought by many at the start to be an impossibility destined to fail if not from insurmountable technical problems then from political corruption. (It was the heyday of Boss Tweed in New York.)

But the Brooklyn Bridge was at once the greatest engineering triumph of the age, a surpassing work of art, a proud American icon, and a story like no other in our history. Courage, chicanery, unprecedented ingenuity and plain blundering, heroes, rascals, all the best and worst in human nature played a part. At the center of the drama were the stricken chief engineer, Washington Roebling and his remarkable wife, Emily Warren Roebling, neither of whom ever gave up in the face of one heartbreaking setback after another.

The Great Bridge is a sweeping narrative of a stupendous American achievement that rose up out of its era like a cathedral, a symbol of affirmation then and still in our time.

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain is a collection of 169 short stories by the author. All the tales he wrote over the course of his lengthy career are gathered here, including such immortal classics as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,� “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," “The Diary of Adam and Eve,� and “The $30,000 Bequest.� Twain’s inimitable wit, his nimble plotting, and his unerring insight into human nature are on full display in these wonderfully entertaining stories.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 � 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."