“In the most important work on the Brooklyn Bridge in a generation, Richard Haw shows how and why it remains a central but contested American icon.”
—David E. Nye, author of America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings

"Absorbing and provocative. Richard Haw sells you the great bridge in a thousand incarnations."
—Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland and Paradise Alley

Hailed by some as the Eighth Wonder of the World when it opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge is one of the world's most recognizable and beloved icons. For over one hundred years it has excited and fascinated with stories of ingenuity and heroism, and it has been endorsed as a flawless symbol of municipal improvement and a prime emblem of American technological progress.

Bringing together more than sixty images of the bridge that, over the years, have graced postcards, magazine covers, and book jackets and appeared in advertisements, cartoons, films, and photographs, Richard Haw traces the diverse ways that this majestic structure has been received, adopted, and interpreted as an American idea. Haw's account is not a history of how the bridge was made, but rather of what people have made of the Brooklyn Bridge-in film, music, literature, art, and politics-from its opening ceremonies to the blackout of 2003.

Richard Haw completed his PhD in his hometown at the University of Leeds before permanently settling in New York. He is a professor of literature and writing at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.