A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! de Harry Harrison - 1973

This novel must surely rank with the best that is being produced by American writers today. It is an ingenious and absorbing novel based on the proposition that America lost the War of Independence, that the renegade George Washington has been quietly and decently shot, and that the greatest colony in the British Empire is to be connected physically to the Home Country by the Trans-Atlantic Tunnel Project. The project begins as the brain-child of Sir Isambard Brassey-Brunel; but with some irony, it passes to the control of Captain Augustine Washington, a descendant of the traitor George. The story is beautifully told, and the engineering construction given in fascinating detail. The trains that will use the tunnel can travel at 200 miles per hour, and will supersede the clumsy coal-fired aircraft that are used to cross the Atlantic at speed. This is the kind of book that many people will want to read more than once.