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Michael Aaron Rockland's book, "The George Washington Bridge: Poetry in Steel," is not only about that great bridge but about the author's adventures on it.
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He came to write it when he tried to get a book to read on the George from libraries and discovered there wasn't any. Meanwhile the shelves were covered with the nine books written on the Brooklyn Bridge. He figured that if he was to read a book on the bridge he'd have to write it. One thing he discovered is that the George was supposed to look entirely different than it does and, wonder of wonders, it was completed a year early and millions of dollars under budget. While New Yorkers tend to ignore the George and favor the Brooklyn, this is part of the city's long disdain for all things Jersey. Ironically, the great architects of the 20th century favored the George not only over the Brooklyn but, as the great architect Le Corbusier wrote, "The George Washington is the most beautiful bridge in the world," and Mies Van de Rohe considered it "the most beautiful structure in the Greater New York area." These architects were thrilled that steel could be beautiful, and celebrated the fact that, of all bridges, form follows function when it comes to the George. The George is now almost ninety years old is the busiest bridge in the world, with some 106 million vehicles passing over it each year.
This book was Professor Rockland's fifteenth, and the sixteenth and seventeenth will appear in the next year or so. His early career was in the U.S. diplomatic service with several of our embassies overseas. He has been at Rutgers, first as a dean, then as a professor and writer, half a century,
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