“Builders of the Hoosac Tunnel” is a meticulously researched history of one of our country’s most significant engineering endeavors. The construction of the Hoosac Tunnel has long been of local interest; it took place right here in western Massachusetts.

Engineering historian and professor emeritus Cliff Schexnayder, who lives in Connecticut, clearly spent years working on this book. He was awarded a fellowship to work at the Smithsonian Institute Libraries and did much of his research there. (He also worked extensively in the Greenfield library.)

The five-mile-long railroad tunnel runs through the Hoosac Mountain from Florida to North Adams. Still in use today for freight trains, it was for many years the longest tunnel in the United States. Schexnayder delivers biographies of several of the men who were instrumental in its construction.

Most of his subjects are engineers, including engineering pioneer Loammi Baldwin, who first conceived of the tunnel as part of a canal system in the 1820s; Herman Haupt, who did most of the early work on the tunnel in the 1850s; and the Shanley brothers, who finished the job in the 1870s.

The tunnel was also, to a large extent, the brainchild of industrialists who wanted a way to transport goods — and so the book details the life of Alvah Crocker, a mill owner and politician from Fitchburg. The tunnel was the cause of Crocker’s life. It would not have been built without him.

Readers contemplating “Builders of the Hoosac Tunnel” may be dismayed by its size. Its length reflects both the author’s zeal for his subject matter and the complexity of that subject matter. The tunnel’s construction lasted for decades, cost millions of dollars (equivalent to billions today), and took the lives of many workers.

One can learn a lot about American history from this work. Like another project to which Schexnayder refers at the book’s end, the Big Dig in Boston, the Hoosac project was from its very beginnings the nexus of political battles in Massachusetts.

It was also a landmark in the history of engineering. The book details the (often futile) endeavors of engineers to come up with machines that could blast through the rock in the Hoosac Mountain more efficiently than the manpower with which the project began.

The tunnel project thus served as a model and training ground for projects and engineers throughout the United States, in the 19th century and even today.

Cliff Schexnayder will sign copies of “Builders of the Hoosac Tunnel” on Saturday, April 23, from 2 to 4 p.m. at World Eye Bookshop in Greenfield.

In other literary news, expert forager Russ Cohen will speak about local flora and his book, “Wild Plants I Have Known … and Eaten,” on Tuesday, April 19, at 6:30 p.m. at Dickinson Memorial Library in Northfield.

This free talk and slideshow will include handouts and a nibble. It will be followed by a reception across the street.

Tinky Weisblat is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.” Visit her website: www.TinkyCooks.com