You're listening to an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show.

From the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between,

including your stories, send them to Our American Stories.com.

They're some of our favorites.

Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians.

His bestsellers chronicle our nation's critical battles

and achievements, from his Warworks D-Day and Band of Brothers to undaunted courage,

Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the opening of the American West. Stephen Ambrose passed

in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at

Our American Stories, thanks to those who run his estate.

Here is Stephen Ambrose to tell us the story from his bestseller, Nothing Like It in the

World, the Men Who Built, the Transcontinental Railroad.

My editor, Alas May, who said when I completed my who built the transcontinental railroad.

My editor, Alice Mayhew said, when I completed my last book,

you said, you got to do the Pacific Railway.

How did they build it?

And I said, oh, Alice, I don't want to do that.

These guys were robber barons.

They went on and stole the country blind. And then they used all their ill-gotten gains to get a grip on American politics,

which they held on to until the first of the populace and then the progressive parties were formed.

And I don't want to deal with these robber barons.

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