Panama Fever: The Epic History of One of the Greatest Engineering Triumphs of All Time: The Building of the Panama Canal
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

Replete with hubris, obsession, tragedy, and ultimate triumph, the story of the building of the Panama Canal recurrently attracts authors. Parker's version is a worthy successor to The Path between the Seas (1977), by David McCullough. After clearing historical underbrush about surveys and proposed routes, Parker introduces Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, the impresario of the Suez Canal, who attempted a repeat performance on the Isthmus of Panama. Parker's attention to why this was fundamentally impossible––de Lesseps demanded a sea-level canal––displays the author's strength in relating the backbone of the entire story: construction engineering. With engineering's handmaidens of finance, labor, and politics, Parker fluidly narrates the frustrations of the French effort that ended in failure in the late 1880s, followed by the controversial events and personalities who delivered the project and a swath of Columbian territory to the U.S. in 1903. Incorporating into the American construction phase the eradication of yellow fever and discrimination against the black West Indian workforce, Parker achieves a fine history, complete in both technological and human dimensions. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

Parker (Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II ) begins this engrossing narrative of the construction of what Theodore Roosevelt called "one of the great works of the world" well before the 20th century: everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Goethe was interested in a trans-isthmus canal, and one of the most arresting sections of the book chronicles the failed French efforts, in the late 1800s, to build one. Roosevelt then called for the building of a canal in his first address to Congress. The project faced countless challenges, but Parker is especially deft when addressing the racism that magnified already appalling working conditions. Those in charge didn't want to hire white American workers, who were too expensive and too unionized (though later, whites were hired), and the discussions about workers became racialized. The "native Isthmian" was too "indolent," but black workers from the British West Indies were viewed as "cheap and expendable." U.S. authorities discriminated racially, paying workers unequally and trying, in general, to prevent the "intermingling of the races." This is not a narrow history of mechanical engineering but a well-researched and satisfying account of imperial vision and social inequity. Illus., maps. (Mar. 1)

This account of the building of the Panama Canal--an adventure saga, political account and horror story in equal measure--has a workaday sensibility. William Dufris does not boom or simper, and he does little in the way of accents or voices. Instead, he pounds, parries and plods his way through Parker's prose, doing no harm, but not doing the story many favors either. Instead, he pulls back every other sentence or so, reaching for a high point or coming to a sudden halt. The work is solid, but it is hard to feel Dufris's connection to the book. He gamely does his best, but the sum total of his reading is underwhelming. Simultaneous release with the Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 5). (Apr.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.