Train is the story of the most indispensable mode of transportation the world has ever known: the railroad. The presentation will follow Tom on a journey from the birthplace of the locomotive in England, to the frozen Trans-Siberian railroad to cresting the Andes in a rattling coal train, riding with blues musicians across America, ascending to the Tibetan plateau on the world’s highest line and crisscrossing India on its antiquated yet magnificent trains. Train examines not just the mechanics of these grandiose machines, but their gigantic effect on the societies through which they run.
Tom Zoellner is the author of four nonfiction books, The Heartless Stone, Uranium, A Safeway in Arizona and Train. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, NPR’s All Thing Considered and Talk of the Nation, PRI’s Marketplace, Fox and Friends, CNN, Bloomberg TV and C Span’s Book TV. His work has been translated into thirteen languages, and his journalism has appeared in Harper’s, Time, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Oxford American, Men’s Health, Slate and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other places. He is an Associate Professor of English at Chapman University and lives in the mountains above Los Angeles.