Kansas City and the Railroads is the classic study of how Kansas City became a leading transportation center and the most important city between St. Louis and Denver. It illustrates the crucial role entrepreneurship, boosterism, political maneuvering, and individual decision making - as well as greed and corruption - played in determining rail locations and consequently urban-growth patterns. First published in 1962, it remains highly regarded as a landmark study of the forces that shaped the growth of urban America. In this edition Glaab has included a new preface explaining the development of this study and its relation to the literature that has appeared over the last thirty years.